Danica Patrick crashes in Pits - again...

Unfortunately, I did not get to see the race (sad day that F-1 was not on at 7.30AM - it is the only time I get to watch a whole race, AND I could only watch the start of the Indycars before running out the door...)

Anyway, it sounds like a serious incident and it got NO coverage of significance anywhere I could fine easily last night or this morning.....

It sounds like she made a pretty big mistake and it smacks of NASCAR that it i=has not received the attention of Dixon's brain-fade.....

Must be something in the water up there....

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Originally Posted by Chris Herr

I think it's more of a case of "Danica screwed up!", as did Milka Duno and Scott Dixon. What scares me about Danica's incident is how exposed and vulnerable crew menbers are.

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And what about Foyt4? Milka might have had to move over to avoid hitting the car in front but was was Foyt4 doing there anyway? He was suppose to be behind her.

OMG Did I just defend Milka?

What is it with the Danica! fans? Have they caught the "blame the other person" disease from her? Whenever she shows a lack of judgment or makes a mistake, they always seem to try to deflect or minimize the situation by presenting some conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Either she had a valid "reason", it was someone else's fault, driver xyz did something even worse, the story is made up, or there was something wrong with the car. She ALWAYS has something wrong with her car. Its steering problems, understeer, no rear grip, yatta yatta yatta. Its never her fault according to them. In this case, some silly fans have even suggested the Dixon crew threw the tire in front of her causing a crash. Incredible. At least BB had the guts to finally penalize her, even if it was just a drive-through.

If you want to see the video, it is at indy500.com. Unlike indycar.com, they post every incident in the video library and let you judge for yourself. The question I have is why did she even think it was ok to do a long smoky burn out through all of the other pit boxes. NONE of the other drivers in the video saw any need to play top-fuel dragster and they all moved out into the proper pit lane after leaving their pit. What was her problem?

However, someone posted a video on YouTube that has a bit more. After she hit the wall, only one of Danica!'s crew started down pit lane and then stopped. They turned around and walked slowly back to their pit. I do remember watching the online coverage and her crew turned around and looked the other way. When the crew did finally wonder down to pull her back, they walked pretty slowly. I guess when you throw your team under the bus on a regular basis their motivation level isn't very high.

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Originally Posted by gofastandwynn

I remember Mario Andretti doing that right infront of me at Michigan in 93 or 94, and seeing people spin leaving the pits on cold tires quite often in the CART days...

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If Mario spins in the pits, and Danica spins in the pits, Danica must be as good as Mario...?

Good point.

I watched the Indy500.com video and also read the story in autosport.com this morning about the race and it quoted Danica as saying she hit a tire that caused her to spin - it also said she apologized for the incident.

I am glad she apologized. The video does not seem to show her hitting anything to cause the spin- just getting on the gas too hard and losing control of the car - kind of like a teenage guy showing off if you ask me.... although I wonder i the diff did something funny or if there might be some traction control device that kicked in suddenly (you know -like the one at Bennetton in 1995 that they "forgot" to remove from the software but was not working ;) !!)

Well, at least both of the top openwheel series racing this weekend seemed to exhibit an unusual amount of brain fade (although at least conditions at Silverstone warranted mistakes)...

Hey, sometimes I kill perfectly good plants doing stupid things ( I am a 4th generation nursery owner and grow 500,000+/- shrubs a year).... it can happen.....

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Originally Posted by DrDomm

If Mario spins in the pits, and Danica spins in the pits, Danica must be as good as Mario...?

Good point.

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Mario had his share of brain fade in his day... you gotta love the safety truck incident.... It seems to me he was pretty good a deflecting blame too... almost as good as Danica....

that being said - well, obviously, Danica is no Mario (I don't really think that was implied - but I do not want anyone to think I even come close to thinking there is a legit comparison of their driving skills).

Yeah, I was just joking about the Mario thing.

I was at the Glen. I did see a tire get away, and originally thought it came off of her car. However, there was a replay on the "big screen", and it looked like the loose tire was behind her. She definitely had 4 tires on her car after the incident.

No connection between right foot and frontal lobe?

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Originally Posted by Dagger

No connection between right foot and frontal lobe?

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Perhaps the "fly-by-wire" connection between the CPU and throttle actuator failed :D

It's a pity Briscoe wasn't alongside her so that he could've helped straighten her up....