Last week, there was a bizarre qualifying session at Talladega Superspeedway that had a couple of drivers reacting.
One of them is Danica Patrick. The rules of the format prompted many drivers to elect to sit on pit road until the final minutes before attempting to post a lap. Because of this, Patrick was able to qualify for the race but not her boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
According to Patrick "I was really pissed off after qualifying. I went to the NASCAR hauler and I said, 'What the [expletive] is this? Is that what we were trying to accomplish?"
She adds "Part of it was because it was Ricky, and part of it was because that could have just as easily been me. I know how important those races are to me and my team, but also my sponsors and the people who invest in those events, especially the big ones at the speedways, but all of them. ... I was fighting for not having someone that wasn't deserving being in that situation."
Right after showing her displeasure with NASCAR, Patrick returned to the motorcoach she shares with Stenhouse and said that she would understand if he left the track but would have loved it if he stayed. In which he did.
Patrick said "He wanted to go home. As much as a girlfriend, I wanted him to stay and be there, I was like 'I get it, if you want to go home, go home. I get it.' He wanted to ride the tractor all day and not even watch the race, which I wouldn't want to watch either if I was in that scenario, so I really understood where he was coming from. He ended up doing the right thing. He had some sponsor obligations the next day."
Adding "I just hope that no one undeserving is ever in that scenario in the future. Hopefully NASCAR does something that it doesn't happen."
NASCAR instituted multi-round group qualifying prior to the season. While exciting most weeks, issues have developed at the restrictor-plate tracks of Daytona International Speedway and Talladega.
Patrick lamented "[NASCAR] didn't give me a solution, but I don't blame them. You really don't want to argue with Mr. Helton. But I was glad they were all in there because I had thought it was important that they knew that, even if it was just me that was upset and scared. I said, 'I'm throwing my hand up saying I'm afraid it is going to be me next.' I think they very much understood."
