Danica’s finish line crash is just a part of the wild final laps Daytona video that has now been released by NASCAR. Click that button, and take a look at Danica Patrick’s aggressive driving on Saturday.
As you’ll see, winner Jimmie Johnson dominated the race, breaking ahead of the pack to easily take his 64th career Sprint Cup victory — his third at Daytona alone .
You can hear the commentators speculating that if anyone wants to beat Johnson, “You’ve got to make something happen right here…”
Danica Patrick definitely tried to make something happen. But the aggressive maneuver is a flat-out mistake, which she later acknowledged.
Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt, and the GoDaddy Chevrolet remained drivable. She ended up in 14th place after being in the top ten for most of the Coke Zero 400 event at the Daytona International Speedway.
Danica Patrick was recently hit by controversy when commentator and former racer Kyle Petty repeated allegations that she wasn’t a real race car driver — adding the cruel twist that she was too old to learn .
In May, Patrick was reportedly highly peeved when boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse Jr. appeared to cause a three-way accident that caused Danica to fall back to 29th place in the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The third driver, Brad Keselowski, stepped forward and took the blame, but to many observers it sure looked like Stenhouse was the screw-up in that incident.
Fox Sports got Danica’s finish line crash reaction once she had seen the replay. In part, she said, “It felt like I ran just along the wall but it looked like it could have been me that came down the front of the 38, it definitely wasn’t what I was trying to do at all…I lost spots doing it, I definitely apologize…”
Check out their entire video clip right here:
Patrick said she got some more things figured out. I certainly hope so.
What’s your take on the Danica finish line crash?
[Danica Patrick photo by nickleford via Wikimedia ]