Indianapolis Notes

Danica Patrick had been running 20th or so, but was in 7th place for a restart with 40 laps to go after taking two tires. She then was 13th on a restart 32 laps later with eight laps to go, and dropped to 27th by the end of the race, last car but one on the lead lap.

Chase Elliott, driving in only his fourth Sprint Cup race and his first ever at Indianapolis, finished nine positions ahead of Danica in 18th. Of course, he did win the Xfinity championship last year, his first year driving in that series. Danica drove Xfinity for two full years and never won a single race, let alone a championship. Her best points finish was 13th in that series. There were, interestingly, only 14 full time drivers in Xfinity that year.

The one car behind Danica on the lead lap at Indianapolis yesterday? Her boss and team owner, Tony Stewart, who had taken four tires when she took two. Not a good day for the team, you might say, except that Kevin Harvick led 75 laps and finished third while Kurt Busch finished eighth.

Harvick might well have won except that Denny Hamlin got a little too exuberant in trying to help him on a restart. He was pushing Harvick to help him go faster, but overdid it a bit and lifted Harvick's rear wheels up off of the track. These are rear wheel drive cars, so instead of going faster, the move almost caused a big wreck and left Harvick pissed off and fourth in the running order.

Speaking of pissed off, Aric Almirola got into an “incident” with Trevor Bayne and, once he got his car underweigh, went after Bayne and smacked his car on the track a couple of times. I’m not sure what his issue was, because this was his second accident and he was already several laps down, and in any case he was the one who hit Bayne’s car in the ass in the first place. Maybe he thinks Bayne backed into him at 180 mph?