All in all it was a good day for Danica Patrick and her No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet SS team for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in Sunday’s Windows 10 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race as she earned a career-best Pocono (Pa.) Raceway finish.
Despite running out of fuel in the final laps, Patrick managed to finish in 16th place, her best finish in six Sprint Cup starts at the 2.5-mile racetrack known as “The Tricky Triangle.”
“I finally finished a race at Pocono,” Patrick said after the race. “We had an OK GoDaddy Chevy today. The team did a good job giving me a solid car today. I really think I could have saved more fuel there at the end of the race if I would have known that we were close on fuel, and we maybe could have gotten a better finish, but I’m happy we were able to put together an entire race here at Pocono.”
Patrick started in 20th place and had a tight-handling racecar early in the running of Sunday’s 160-lap race. Patrick pitted for the first time at lap 28 for four tires, fuel and wedge and air pressure adjustments. Following the pit stop and thanks to a variety of pit strategies and sequences, Patrick restarted in 29th at lap 33.
By lap 40 Patrick had moved back into the top-20. Thanks to a long green-flag run and the variety of pit sequences, Patrick took the lead at lap 58 and stayed up front for five circuits before coming to pit road at lap 62 under caution. Patrick pitted for four tires, fuel and another air pressure adjustment to help the car’s handling. She returned to the track in 23rd place.
As the race wore on and pit strategies played out, it was clear that fuel mileage would become the deciding factor at the race’s end. Patrick made her last scheduled pit stop at lap 124 for four tires, fuel and a wedge adjustment. She returned to the track at lap 125 in 28th place.
Patrick moved into 18th by lap 145.
At lap 150, crew chief Daniel Knost told Patrick that several cars in front of her who had pitted earlier than the 10 team were pushing it to make their fuel last to the end of the race. With five laps remaining, Knost told Patrick he believed she was good enough on fuel mileage to go hard to try and pick up more positions on the track as cars in the lead pack began to run out of fuel.
Unfortunately, Patrick’s tank also ran dry, and she radioed in with two laps to go that she was out of fuel. Patrick came down pit road for one second of fuel and returned to the track to finish the race in 16th place. The finish was Patrick’s eighth top-20 of the 2015 season.
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