DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- If you didn't know the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 at Daytona International Speedway was Danica Patrick's first stock-car race, her first question after rolling across the finish line in sixth place was a dead giveaway.
"Where should I go?" Patrick asked, after Bobby Gerhart took the checkered flag for his record sixth ARCA Series win at Daytona.
At the end of an adventuresome 80-lap race at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, Patrick found her way to the garage. Between the green flag and the checkered flag, Patrick had slid through the grass and spun after contact from Nelson Piquet Jr. on Lap 54, restarted 24th and ultimately recovered to run as high as fifth before the finish.
"That was fun -- that was a good time," Patrick radioed to crew chief Tony Eury Jr. "I definitely learned a lot. But I felt what it was like to have the tires go off. That was a handful."
With an adroit save after the contact from Piquet and her charge through the field in the final 17 laps, Patrick earned high praise from her JR Motorsports team.
"You drove the wheels off that thing, girl," radioed co-owner Rick Hendrick. "We're proud of you."
Patrick replied, "Thank you very much."
After climbing from her car, Patrick looked at the battle scars on her No. 7 Chevrolet.
"I was pretty excited to go from last back to the top five again," she said. "It was really fun. I was going side-by-side with people. The GoDaddy car doesn't look very pretty, but it was fun."
It was an impressive start for Patrick, who will race a partial schedule in the Nationwide Series for JR Motorsports. She is expected to announce Monday whether she will make her Nationwide Series debut at Daytona.
The Daytona ARCA race is notorious for its frequent and spectacular crashes -- "You need to wear a helmet if you watch it from the stands," driver Scott Speed said earlier in the week-- and this year's race was no exception.
The car carnage started early, when Bill Baird's car got wildly loose on Lap 7 and collided with Steve Blackburn, resulting in an eight-car pileup. The accident happened behind Patrick, who slipped one spot after the start and was running 13th at the time.
The race restarted 10 laps later -- and the field couldn't even get through a full lap without another wreck. Dakoda Armstrong's car spun out and was hit hard by Craig Goess, bringing the race to a halt again. Patrick artfully swerved high to avoid the wreck.
Another female driver in the field, Jill George, walked away safely after her car overturned in a frightening accident on Lap 27. The race was red-flagged in the aftermath of the accident as track safety workers repaired a fence.
Patrick surged to sixth after a pit stop on Lap 29, then showed she could run with the leaders. But she learned about drafting at Daytona the hard way on Lap 49, when she moved out of the low groove and lost touch with the leaders, slipping from sixth to 11th. She noted over her in-car radio that he car was beginning to get loose and slide around on the track -- and things were about to get much worse.
On Lap 54, Piquet tapped fenders with Patrick on the frontstretch, spinning Patrick into the infield grass. She made an impressive save, managing to keep her car from sliding back up the wall. After a pair of pit stops, Patrick was able to get back in the race but slipped to 24th before working her way through most of the field.
"I bumped from the side. I bumped from the front. I got bumped from the back. I learned a lot, and I had so much fun in a race car [Saturday]. So I can't wait to do it again," Patrick said.
Video:
• Watch Danica's impressive start
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
