Danica Patrick GoDaddy car's mid-race crash
Saturday was a rough day for NASCAR at Daytona International Speedway.
All told, I believe there were 50 different vehicles that ended up bent, banged, scraped, torn and trashed at Daytona on Saturday, February 13th between the Nationwide and Truck Series races.
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We finally had the chance to watch Danica Patrick in the Nationwide Daytona race, the Drive4COPD 300.
I was starting to think that the car was going to blow up from the way their radio traffic was being reported, but that didn’t get a chance to pan out as she got caught up in a big wreck on lap 68.
I was thinking that ESPN’s coverage of the race with Danica in it was pretty even-keeled, unlike the ARCA race where we rarely got a glimpse of the leaders if Danica was in the front 1/2 of the field.
But that changed quickly after the wreck as every single media member simulated the 100-meter dash to get to the garage and the other 10 guys that were in the wreck with Danica were mostly ignored.
But then again, it was about Danica. She’s built up the image and we have swallowed that pill. Now we get to enjoy it, but we’ll never know if Danica was going to be able to contend at the end of the race. I would have enjoyed seeing how she could have finished.
As it was, I brought a few entertaining quotes from Saturday’s Nationwide race:
Kevin Harvick In-Car Radio after a bad pit stop:
“Coaches, new shoes, higher salaries… slower pitstops…“ I lost the garbled words after that, but I think we get where he was going with that one.
Dale Earnhardt Jr 2010 Nationwide Daytona flip
Or Brendan Gaughan’s quote about the wreck where Dale Jr.’s car started flipping in front of him:
“I saw Jr’s under-carriage, and thought, Aw, I’m screwed!”
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The Truck Series race later that day contributed nicely to the carnage of the day… as bumpers didn’t snug up properly from front to back and many a truck was dumped as they tried to bump draft… dudes… NASCAR, ya gotta fix that.
But like the Nationwide race, the early laps… OK, the first lap had it’s crummy luck moment.
In the Nationwide race, I was also looking forward to watching Chrissy Wallace’s performance, but she was taken out early… so too, did Austin Dillon’s day end early in the black No. 3 truck.
Every time I settle in to watch how he does, he seems to get the short end of the stick. It feels like some other, older days.
It was a long day of racing, and this racing fan’s near perfect day of TV watching.
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I have to say, I was able to take over the bar at the Chili’s I go to every Saturday and I had the race on a giant, HD screen and it was fun.
Here’s an interseting observation: Wide screen TV’s seem to make the field seem slower than when they’re on a standard screen.
A humorous moment: When the race ended, some of the patrons looked at me like I was some god-like entity. You see, as Tony Stewart won his 5th Nationwide Daytona race in his Oreo – Ritz sponsored car, well, I just happened to have been wearing my Oreo Ritz hat. LOL. It’s like I knew! I’ll never correct them about the sheer luck of it and I left on a high. My main hat, a black hat, with a black No. 3 on it, is missing.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to git to eBay and find myself some spare sheet metal auctions.
