[ho428]

She got down 3 laps early with a severly ill handling car, it was fairly obvious she didn't know what to do with it, the car finally decided.
Once they got the car worked on she pretty much held her own to finish a respectable 24th, I'd say that was a good job of communication between her and the crew.

Only lost one more lap the rest of the way, as fast as cars were getting lapped that's not bad.
I still think she'll be in the top 25 points at the end, barring something weird. She'll have a few good runs and crash out a few. Typical rookie season.

[The Champ]

Originally Posted by ho428

She got down 3 laps early with a severly ill handling car, it was fairly obvious she didn't know what to do with it, the car finally decided.
Once they got the car worked on she pretty much held her own to finish a respectable 24th, I'd say that was a good job of communication between her and the crew.

It wasn't "severely ill handling" until she ran into David Stremme's left rear quarter. She thought she had a tire go down and pitted, when she came out, she was 3 lap down. After that her "ill handling" was gone...

The rest of the race she varied between 2 and 6 laps down. She took the wave around a couple of times to gain a 2 of the laps back to finish "only" 4 laps down.

I still think she'll be in the top 25 points at the end, barring something weird.

Denny Hamlin missed 4 races, had a replacement driver for another after he started the race and then wrecked yesterday. He's ahead of Danica in the points.

Most likely it will take a lot of weird things happening for her to move up to 25th. She's only ahead of 5 drivers that have been in all 13 races, and all of them run on severely limited budgets vs. Danica having some of the best cars and crews available.