Danica Patrick hopes to start Sprint Cup career at Daytona 500

Associated Press

RICHMOND, VA.

Danica Patrick thinks it would be nice if she got her NASCAR Sprint Cup career started at the Daytona 500.

The IndyCar star, who is moving to NASCAR full time next season, will run a limited Cup schedule in a car owned by Tony Stewart next year. She will mostly race at tracks where Stewart expects her to struggle, which makes Daytona even more attractive to her.

“I think it would be a good start,” she said. “It would be nice if the Sprint Cup debut was at a track where I have the opportunity to finish well, especially given the idea that we’re going to go to tracks that are going to be challenging and probably ones that I’ll do the worst at, but I don’t know yet.”

Stewart, who was at an appearance with sponsor Office Depot in Richmond, said in a telephone interview that he has looked at having her run the sport’s biggest race of the season, but hasn’t decided yet if she will. He said he worked with Patrick in a two-car draft during a Nationwide series race at Daytona in July, and said “she ran really, really well all day there.”

Stewart has said that Patrick, who also will race full time in the Nationwide series in a car owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. next year, will drive in eight to 10 Cup races with an emphasis on learning.

“I think it’s hard for anybody coming into this Cup series,” he said. “I was intimidated the first time I raced in the Daytona 500. I went into that race just thinking about running laps.”

As an owner, he said, “it’s my job to make sure we keep her goals attainable.”

Patrick sounds ready to do the same, especially since the plan is to have her race full time in the Cup series in 2013.

“I think the idea is to pick tracks that’ll be really hard and that I’ll need the most practice at, which is going to be really exciting as I’m lapped for the fifth time out there,” she said.

“But it will make it better for the next time I come back.”

BOWYER ON THE MOVE?

It doesn’t sound as if Clint Bowyer will be back with Richard Childress Racing next season.

Neither driver or car owner delcared talks totally over, but both sounded Thursday as if there’s little chance they’ll come to an agreement to keep Bowyer behind the wheel of the No. 33 Chevrolet after this year.

Childress even referred to Bowyer in the past tense several times while talking about the driver in an an interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“You know, we’ve tried and we’ve really worked really hard to put the deal together to keep Clint,” Childress said. “It’s not 100 percent off the table, but it’s getting tougher and tougher as the day goes by. Clint’s got a couple of really good opportunities there facing him. We just, for us, it just didn’t seem that we could get everything worked out. “