It wasn’t the night Danica Patrick had hoped for Friday at Richmond International Raceway.
After qualifying 16th and finishing 18th in her Richmond debut last fall, Patrick was hoping to improve on her performance. However, early handling issues and a loose condition with her car in the closing laps relegated the driver of the No. 7 GoDaddy.com to a 21st-place finish.
“It’s a bummer,” Patrick said. “There are the days when you hope you can make the most out of your good weekend. And there are weekends when you don’t have great finishes, it’s so much work. The ones where you finish well are more straightforward and, may I say, easier.”
Thirteen laps into the race, Patrick complained about a funky vibration with the car that intensified with brake use. By the first caution, on Lap 24, Patrick had dropped four spots but restarted 19th as drivers peeled off to pit.
Her track position was short-lived, however, and Patrick lost six spots in the next five laps.
"Something feels really weird ... really sideways," Patrick radioed to the crew.
Patrick fell to a race-low 32nd-place by Lap 50. Twelve circuits later, she was the last car on the lead lap with then-race leader Kevin Harvick closing in.
Just prior to the second caution, on Lap 68, Harvick caught the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, but fortunately for Patrick, J.J. Yeley hit the wall in Turn 4 to slow the action and she remained on the lead lap.
“Thank the good lord,” Patrick exclaimed once the race went yellow. “I’m super loose … quite honestly, I feel like something’s wrong.”
Patrick restarted 30th on Lap 76 and made progress after crew chief Tony Eury Jr. made adjustments to the car. Still, the car became increasingly loose as the race progressed.
Patrick was the beneficiary for the third caution, on Lap 115. She said that, on a “loose scale” from one to 10, her car was “probably a 10.”
So with additional time for being the last car on the lead lap, Eury elected to take a big swing at the car with a track-bar adjustment and an air-pressure adjustment, and the team removed a rubber out of the right rear spring. Patrick restarted 25th and went to work over the final 125 laps.
While she dropped two laps off the pace, Patrick salvaged a 21st-place finish.
“I earned my pay today,” said Patrick, who is currently 12th in the Nationwide Series point standings.
“But everyone hung in there, and that’s all I can ask. I wish I could have got a better finish for GoDaddy, the team and for us, because we were having a good weekend, but we’ll learn.”
