In the “Gatorade Duel - Race 1”, run at Daytona on Thursday, Danica was nudged into the wall, where her No.10 Chevy was crunched up really badly. She didn’t cause this crash; she just paid the price for it. She wasn’t hurt, but she was denied a “finish”, through no fault of her own. And her car was destroyed.
The two Gatorade Duel races are part of the “festivities” of Speed Week at Daytona, but are not directly related to the Daytona 500, coming up tomorrow (Sunday, February 26). Different races, but the same track — the notorious Daytona International Speedway. That’s why it’s “good” that Danica got crashed[I] here[/I] on Thursday.
Bad for the car, and expensive for Tony Stewart’s team, but potentially good for Danica.
Good for Danica because: With this crash, she has demonstrated, for anyone who doubted her, that she can take a punch and remain standing. And she demonstrated, for anyone who doubted her, that she has the right attitude about racing with the big boys, in NASCAR’s biggest and baddest arena.
I really think that the folks who have criticized her attitude as over-confident have it wrong. I think she has her head screwed on straight for racing in the big time, and for the big show on Sunday. Throughout the race on Thursday, Danica was driving sensibly, but not timidly. She was using this practice race [I]for practice,[/I] not going for broke. Here’s a good article.
Maybe most important of all, Danica now has had the experience of wiping out, hard, at the dreaded Daytona Speedway. There’s no longer any reason for Daytona to intimidate Danica, and clearly she’s not intimidated.
The car, on the other hand, is in “the morgue”, dead, totalled, and won’t be in Sunday’s Daytona 500. Instead, Danica will be driving an identical-looking back-up car.
She will be starting Sunday’s race in 29th position, near the back of the pack. But, that’s not a problem. She’s perfectly comfortable back there. Five hundred miles is a long way to race, and Danica is pretty good at slowly working her way up the field. Watch where she is with 250 miles to go. And then watch where she is with 100 miles to go.
As in the Gatorade Duel, Danica will be in the Daytona 500 as part of her NASCAR “learning-curve”. So, just finishing the 500 will be an accomplishment for her.
Finishing in the top 15, or the top 10, if she can pull that off, will be fabulous.
And if the opportunity presents itself to do even better than that, she won’t be shy about seizing the opportunity. She may be a complete rookie in the Daytona 500, but she’s a competitive race-car driver. And that means that part of her is definitely in it to win it.
