Danica Patrick Getting Rich in Richmond

She came awfully close to a new NASCAR Sprint Cup Series record.

Danica Patrick, driver of the No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), finished sixth in Sunday night’s Oral-B USA 500 Sprint Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

She was fourth on the final green-white-checkered restart but dropped to sixth when the checkered flag fell two laps later.

Patrick’s sixth-place finish is the highest finish by a female at Atlanta. The previous record was Janet Guthrie’s 10th-place finish on March 19, 1978. Only a fifth-place result by Sara Christian in a Sprint Cup race on Oct. 2, 1949 at Heidelberg (Pa.) Raceway tops Patrick’s finish. Christian also finished sixth at Langhorne (Pa.) Speedway on Sept. 11, 1949 and Guthrie finished sixth at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway on Aug. 28, 1977.

Though she ended up one spot behind Christian’s record, Patrick notched her third top-10 of the year as she finished seventh in May at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City and eighth in July at Daytona (Fla) International Speedway.  If she scores one more top-10 in 2014, she will tie Guthrie, who had four in 1977.

Patrick’s next shot will come Saturday night at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway, where she told reporters with a smile after the Atlanta race, “I have sucked at Richmond every time, so I sure hope I can run well at Richmond, now.”

In three Sprint Cup appearances at Richmond, Patrick’s best start was 30th and her best result was 29th, both in the April 2013 race. Her three NASCAR Nationwide Series events there weren’t much better with a best start of 16th in April 2012 and best finish of 18th in September 2011.

Not much to write home about.

But the IndyCar Series proved well for Patrick at Richmond with four top-10 finishes in five starts, including a top-five in June 2009.

Consider that she’d only raced at Atlanta twice in the Sprint Cup Series before last weekend and never qualified or finished in the top-20. Then the obvious question would be, why can’t she succeed at Richmond?

Patrick, crew chief Tony Gibson and the GoDaddy team are hoping for another good run and more good finishes to keep building the record.

TSC PR