NASCAR Cup Series

Danica won't be a pushover in NASCAR

Published Oct. 15, 2010 12:42 a.m. ET

foxsports

Turns out, it’s not just the boys that are willing to “Have at it” in order to gain respect on the track.

Danica Patrick is willing to mix it up, too, if the NASCAR boys start trying to push her around.

Fresh off a dramatic incident in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Auto Club Speedway in California, Patrick made it clear Thursday that she doesn’t plan to be a pushover in the stock-car ranks. What started out as her telling of a humorous story about a go-kart incident with Sam Hornish Jr. turned into full-blown insight into Patrick’s demeanor on the track.

Last weekend, Patrick was on track to turn in her best performance of the season when she was hit by James Buescher late in the race. She had run as high as 12th and hovered in or near the top 15 throughout the race. Then, after contact from Buescher, her car lifted off the track and sustained significant damage, ending Patrick’s chance for a top-15 finish.

Despite being parked next to Buescher’s transported in the garage at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Patrick has not been approached by the young driver to discuss the incident and work things out as of Thursday afternoon.

“He had an opportunity,” Patrick said. “We had rookie meetings yesterday morning. We are pitted in the garage right next to each other. There’s an opportunity if he wanted to say something.”

Obviously he has not.

According to Jeff Stankewicz, Buescher’s crew chief this weekend at Charlotte, "That was last week, this is this week."

But clearly, the silence isn’t sitting too well with Patrick.

Thursday, she told a story of how when she raced go-karts, if she couldn’t get by someone in a couple of laps, she’d hit them and push their kart toward the wall and out of her path. While she joked about how it would be incorrect to be portrayed as a rough driver, it was clear that Patrick isn’t planning on taking a lot of needless rubbing in her NASCAR racing career, either.

After telling about driving over Hornish’s kart, she paused and joked, “That’s going to come up totally wrong. I’m sure of it.”

But then she elaborated on her stance on bumping.

“I like being able to make my own destiny a little bit with people out there ... I might come across as a little bit more of a pushover over there (in Indy cars), but in this series, you’ve got fenders all the way around and if someone makes you mad enough, for sure, you can just take them out,” she said. “You can create, you make your own way, you don’t have to be taken advantage of because someone is just more crazy than you.”

In NASCAR, where the drivers can lean on one another and use contact while battling for position, Patrick finds herself in a different position than in the past.

And while she’s concentrating on learning as much as possible and refuses to spark a feud with Buescher, she’s also not going to be pushed around here.

“I think it’s pretty sure to say that at this point in time I’m not going to make it my mission to go out there and take him out because I don’t want anything to take away from my race,” she said. “If he in any way starts to act up out there, yeah I’m going to do something about it ... I hope that after he thinks about what he did last weekend, maybe if he plays well with others, then we’ll be able to carry on. But if he doesn’t, then there’s going to be a need for something to happen because you can’t get pushed around out there, you just, you can’t.”

Patrick said that she got into Buescher’s car a little bit accidentally on the lap prior to the crash, “but it wasn’t like I was trying to take him out.” She added that she might not even be racing against him in the coming races considering that there are 43 cars on the track. If they do end up battling for a spot, “hopefully he plays well.”

Patrick, 28, says that she’s learned a lot about how to race people over the course of her career, and about how respect works between drivers.

Clearly she’s not out to start any battles or create a situation on the track. She doesn’t have any plans to be an instigator or to be one stirring things up. She’s too busy trying to learn to take on that role.

Still, she doesn’t plan to be disrespected on the track, either.

To that end, she’s willing to “Have at it” with the boys, if she has to in order to have a fair chance in a race.

“I think that I’m starting to find the right ways to handle situations,” she said. “I think in the past I just used to yell about it. I’d stomp down pit lane and go to yell at somebody. What matters is what happens out on track. I’ve found that the best thing to do is to give people a taste of their own medicine out there.

“You also gain respect, hopefully, in those situations, too, because you just respect them for standing up for themselves. So it’s not like it’s all bad news when you give somebody what they gave you. It can be a beneficial thing.”