Patrick Finishes 16th at Texas

Danica Patrick finished 16th in the No. 10 TaxACT/GoDaddy Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.

Patrick started from the 21st position and raced her way into 16th by lap 10, despite driving a car that got tighter as the run progressed. When crew chief Daniel Knost called her to pit road under caution at lap 33, the team changed tires, added fuel and made wedge and air pressure adjustments to help improve the car’s handling.

Patrick lined up 14th for the lap 36 restart and quickly lost several positions after the field took the green flag, an issue that would persist each time she had to restart in the outside lane.

The No. 10 TaxACT/GoDaddy Chevrolet SS team continued to make adjustments on each trip to pit road, and Patrick raced her way up to the 15th position at lap 192. She remained inside the top-20 until she restarted in 16th at lap 299. Stuck in the outside lane once again, Patrick dropped all the way back to 24th before the caution flag waved at lap 308.

Knost called Patrick to pit road for four tires, fuel, wedge and air pressure adjustments. She lined up 21st for the final restart with 21 laps to go and was able to work her way up to the 16th position before taking the checkered flag.

The effort marked Patrick’s career-best finish at the 1.5-mile track, trumping a 24th-place result she earned in the November 2012 Sprint Cup race at Texas. With seven races in the books for the 2015 season, Patrick has earned four top-20 finishes. That is two more than at this point of the season for each of the first two years of her fulltime Sprint Cup career.

“The No. 10 TaxACT/GoDaddy team worked really hard all weekend, and I’m proud of the effort everyone gave to make our car run better,” Patrick said. “The track got really loose toward the end of the race, and the car was sideways at times. It was absolutely horrible the second-to-last run, but we were able to get it better there at the end. I’m frustrated we didn’t get a top-15 run, but I’m glad we were able to rally back and at least finish where we did.”

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