INDIANAPOLIS – If nothing else, Danica Patrick provided catchy punchlines before qualifying Saturday for her first Brickyard 400.
The seven-time Indianapolis 500 starter, whose No. 10 Stewart-Haas Chevrolet rolls out 33rd in Sunday’s Samuel Deeds 400 at the Brickyard, showed familiar sass when making the inevitable comparison of driving an IndyCar to a stock car at this track.
“Grab your gonads and go for it,” the Sprint Cup Series rookie said of a learning curve at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that she considers similar for both types of cars. A room full of amused media laughed.
To drive that point home, the 31-year-old Patrick shared input about handling a stock car at Indy from teammate Ryan Newman, whose No. 39 car won the pole.
“Go flat until you see God, then lift,” she repeated.
“Lift,” as in let up on the accelerator and go slower. Drivers aspire to stay as “flat” as possible, which means that accelerator is depressed to the extreme.
Patrick is 27th in Chase points and still coming to grips with NASCAR. She made a huge splash at the Daytona 500 by becoming the first woman to win a series pole. But an eighth-place finish there was her best race this season and only top-10 run this year.
IMS is basically home – she has family here and good vibrations from when the Illinois native raced at Indy in the faster cars. She made the cover of Sports Illustrated after becoming the first woman to lead the Indy 500 in 2005. She finished in the top 10 in six of her seven Indy 500 starts, the best a third place in 2009.
Granted, bigger and slower stock cars are a different animal. Patrick conceded she has had to learn a lot in her first full-time Sprint Cup endeavor. While her competitive nature hates to concede anything, she said a win-or-else mentality isn’t the best way to maintain perspective.
“Hoping for top 10s and wins all the time is fairly unrealistic,” she said.
Still, the popular driver provides an instant buzz, with or without gotcha comments about gonads. Go Daddy is a solid sponsor, and fans flock to the track to see the spunky woman take on the “good ol’ boys.”
She got her first taste of a stock car at IMS in 2012’s inaugural Nationwide Series Indiana 250, but it didn’t last long. Patrick had a run-in with Reed Sorenson on lap 39 and finished 35th in a 43-car field.
“I’m not going to lie. I barely remember those 38 laps,” she said Saturday about two hours before her Brickyard qualifying run.
Just the thought of the Speedway, though, typically brings a smile to Patrick’s face.
“I always like coming here,” she said. “As I’ve said before, many times, it’s a special place. It makes me happy to be here. I feel very comfortable, but at the same time, I’m working on a new car and working on making it handle well and like I want it to and also building up the confidence to do what you can in a Cup car here.”
Her qualifying lap of 182.938 mph was significantly slower than Newman’s record-setting lap of 187.531 mph. Patrick also will start behind her boyfriend, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who qualified 25th.
“We just need four days of testing for qualifying,” a smiling Patrick said, tongue in cheek, to a TV pit reporter after her run.
Wilson writes for The Indianapolis Star, a property of Gannett, parent company of USA TODAY
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