Danica Daytona 500 finish
With one lap to go, Patrick was running third behind Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. The crowd was going nuts, hoping the pole-sitter could somehow pull out an improbable win.
All of a sudden, Patrick's inexperience in stock cars showed as her No. 10 car slipped back to eighth. Johnson held off Earnhardt to win the Great American Race.
"I would imagine pretty much anyone would be kicking themselves about what they coulda, shoulda have done to give themselves an opportunity to win," she said. "There was uncertainty on how to accomplish that."
Patrick led three times for a total of five laps, and she ran in the top 10 most of the day. It wasn't that strenuous, either, giving her a time to chat on the radio with her crew chief and spotter, picking their brains on strategy at the end of the race.
"How am I gonna do this?" Patrick recalled thinking. "I didn't know what to do exactly. Maybe that's just my inexperience. Maybe it was not me thinking hard enough. I'm not sure. I was a little bit uncertain how to do that."
Before Sunday, Janet Guthrie was the highest-finishing woman in the 500. She was 11th in 1980.
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