TALLADEGA, Ala. — On yet another race day when cars thought they could fly, among the results was a battered race car finishing third, Chris Buescher going for a wild ride into the sky and Danica Patrick taking a hit she called the hardest in her career.
Although cars were airborne, perhaps the most dangerous wreck of the day occurred late in the race when Patrick’s car, bumped from behind by Michael McDowell, slid in front of the track, hit Matt Kenseth hard and then sailed at near-full speed into the backstretch inside wall, her Chevrolet erupting into flames. Kenseth also hit the wall very hard while flipping, riding the wall upside-down and rolling back on the track.
Patrick was in the infield medical center an unusually long time. She finally emerged, obviously shaken by not only her incident but also the overall crazy atmosphere of the day.
A half-hour after the accident, she said her chest hurt when she breathed and that she had bruises from the wreck. She said a chest x-ray showed no serious injuries.
“I’m pretty sure I got hit, and the car spun toward the inside wall,” Patrick said. “It hit really hard. Everything — the steering wheel — is way out of place. I hit my foot. Hit my arm. There was fire inside the car. It kind of knocked the breath out of me a little bit.”
Patrick scrambled from the smoking remains of the wrecked car and walked briskly to the nearby wall. As Kenseth climbed from his crashed racer nearby, she leaned over to catch her breath.
“I wish there wasn’t so much distance between the track and the wall (on the backstretch) because you gain such momentum at such a bad angle when you go there,” she said. “I’ve had the unfortunate scenario of hitting the inside wall at a superspeedway a few times now, and they’re all bad.”
Patrick said the fire inside the car caused her to be “probably the most scared” she has been in a race car.
“I haven’t had fire on the inside before,” she said. “It got to the glove a little bit. Honestly, I was thinking about my hair. I have a lot of hair, and I don’t want to lose it.
“That was the worst one (wreck) so far. I have decent bruises on my arm and foot. I hit a wall at 200. And my chest hurts when I breathe.”
Patrick has been racing at the top levels of the sport — and often at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour — since debuting in the IndyCar series in 2005. She raced virtually full time there through the 2011 season. She moved to Sprint Cup racing full time in 2013 after a handful of races in the Xfinity Series.
Patrick said the threat of rain made Sunday’s racing crazier than Talladega’s normal competition.
“We all kind of raced to halfway, then all raced to the rain that was coming and all raced to the end,” she said. “The whole race we were racing like we were racing to the end. There were no moments to relax. I’m sure that expanded peoples’ comfort zone at the end of the race because we were used to running close. Then some people took it to the edge.”
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PHOTOS: Behind the wheel with Danica Patrick
