FONTANA, Calif. ? In what has become an all-too-familiar refrain, Danica Patrick lost a lap early Saturday in a Nationwide Series race.
Patrick had hoped that, as was the case in some of her past races, she would learn throughout the event and possibly begin to run comparable times to the lead pack.
But she never got that chance in the Royal Purple 300 at Auto Club Speedway in California as a piece of debris punched a hole in her radiator, cooking her engine and ending her day after 63 laps of the 200-lap race.
?It?s not a Chevy issue, it?s not a team issue ? it?s just a bad luck issue,? Patrick said after getting out of her car. ?Unfortunately, I feel like we?ve been catching a fair amount of [that] here at the beginning of the season.
?What are you going to do? You just go on to the next one. The good news about NASCAR is there are a lot of races.?
Patrick thought crew chief Tony Eury Jr. had made some changes on a pit stop four laps before the engine issue that could have helped her.
?Tony Jr. does a great job in the pits and changes the car really well and brings the car back to me and it would have been nice to know if that change was what we needed,? she said.
Patrick left with a 35th-place finish and dropped from 12th to 17th in the standings. She has finished on the lead lap in only one of the first five races of the 33-race season.
?We all want to see great results happen,? Patrick said. ?I?m reminding myself I just have to be patient.?
Making the transition from full-time IndyCar driver to NASCAR driver, Patrick will run the full Nationwide season and 10 Cup races.
The track schedule in California didn?t exactly benefit her as teams had only one lengthy practice session Friday instead of two shorter ones where the team has more time to analyze the performance of the car and consider changes.
?The more track time I get, the better,? Patrick said. ?It?s such a fine line ? because you have to manage your [limited] tires [in practice]. It probably would have been better to have a separation between practices maybe but there?s no way to really know that.
?We really did feel like at the end of practice, we had finally gotten the car from pushing to loose, which we were happy with. I was a little nervous we would be loose today and we did start out that way.?
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