Danica Patrick makes 2nd start at Fontana

February 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

LOS ANGELES — Danica Patrick is as curious as everyone else to see how well she performs in her second NASCAR stock-car race Saturday.

Patrick made her debut last weekend in NASCAR’s second-tier Nationwide Series, but her race ended after a car wreck just past the halfway point on the high-banked Daytona International Speedway. Her next race is the Stater Bros. 300 at the much flatter, 2-mile Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, east of Los Angeles.

“I don’t know what to expect [at Fontana],” Patrick, adding that she and her crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., “haven’t really talked about it too much” ahead of her first practice here on Friday.

That’s because, after her Daytona race last Saturday, Patrick spent two days at her Arizona home before arriving in Southern California to start a flurry of media appearances, including “The Ellen Show” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Patrick, 27, also isn’t sure what to expect here because the last time she raced at Auto Club Speedway was in 2005 at the end of her rookie year in what is now called the Izod IndyCar Series.

In the Daytona race, Patrick started 15th but finished a disappointing 35th after being collected in a 12-car wreck. Even so, Patrick said she became more at ease with each of the 69 laps she did complete.

“[At first] I wasn’t super happy with how the car felt,” she said. But after her first pit stop, “the car felt so much different, it was so much more balanced.

“I had a much easier time with it then,” Patrick said. “I picked up a little bit of confidence, naturally. I was feeling really comfortable at the end. Then, obviously, the accident happened.”

But Patrick acknowledged that she still faces a steep learning curve with stock cars, which are heavier and more difficult to control than sleek Indy cars.

“I’m learning as I go,” she said. “At this point, I don’t always know what to ask for” in terms of adjusting her No. 7 Chevrolet during a race. “I don’t know what’s going to happen [to the car] over a 30- or 40-lap run.”

She’s expected to learn a lot more in Saturday’s race, which many see as her first true test in NASCAR. Unlike the Daytona track where the cars draft nose-to-tail in multi-car packs, at Auto Club Speedway the cars tend to get more strung out and passing is more difficult.