This year has not been a very good year for qualifying for races in both Indycar and NASCAR for Danica. I've already "vented" my frustrations on what had been going on this past Indycar season with Andretti Autosport. Hopefully they figure it out for 2011 considering it could be the last season of Danica racing for AA. As for her NNS car, there is so much you can ask her to do if she isn't familiar with either how her stock car handles, or if she never has raced at that track before. Gateway International Raceway, located in Madison, Illinois, is definitely one of those tracks. And although it's within Danica's home state, this is the first time she has ever raced there.
Halfway through the race, she got back to the lead lap being down a lap at 28th position. After that, she started getting racey, slowly but surely moving her way up the field and got up to 25th. Then a 10 car accident happened right in front of her and she was able to "kinda squeak" her way through it, but got tagged in the right rear and tapped the inside wall. The damage didn't seem too bad so Tony Jr. and the JR Motorsports boys got to work on tuning the #7 GoDaddy Chevy Impala. Unfortunately, the rear track bar got bent and despite the pit crew trying to "quick-fix" it, she had to pull the car off again. The crew replaced the track bar after going down 9 laps, but she reentered the race at 24th. With 10 laps to go, Steven Wallace with fresh tires got into the back of Danica's slow #7 car at turn 2 and spun her out. It happens when you're just trying to clock laps in and unfortunately get in the way. Nobody at fault there. She officially finished 22nd. Bottomline, it came down to just surviving and getting to the end of the race. A race pretty much dominatated by the Penske teams of Allgaier and Keselowski.
By the way...hey, Sean Caisse, take your 20 seconds of camera time, and then just go away. Stupid kid needs to learn how to shut the hell up.