Danica Patrick

In her eighth NASCAR race, Danica Patrick and stock car racing finally seemed to click. After struggling with an average 31st-place finish in her first seven races in NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series, Patrick was running 12th ? and on the lead lap with eventual winner Kyle Busch ? with 11 laps left in the 150-lap CampingWorld.com 300 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. But Nationwide races have a habit of getting dicey as they near their end, and Saturday was no exception.

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Danica Patrick's final tuneup in a Sprint Cup car also turned out to be her best before she drives in NASCAR's premier series full time next year. Patrick finished 17th, her highest finish in the 10 Cup races in which she has driven this season. The former IndyCar racer also has driven all year in NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series as she adapts to stock car racing. After starting 37th in the 43-car field Sunday in the AdvoCare 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, Patrick steadily climbed through the pack and appeared set for a possible top-15 finish.

Reporting from Daytona Beach, Fla. -- One day after a final-lap crash in her Gatorade Duels race, Danica Patrick won the pole position for the NASCAR Nationwide Series' Drive4COPD 300. Patrick drove the No. 7 Chevrolet to the front of the pack Friday with a qualifying time of 49.250 seconds at Daytona International Speedway. She averaged 182.741 mph during her run. She becomes the first woman to secure the top spot in a Nationwide Series race since Shawna Robinson at Atlanta on March 12, 1994.

Danica Patrick will make her NASCAR debut this weekend at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. The IndyCar star will drive the No. 7 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in Saturday's second-tier Nationwide Series race. The decision announced Monday to race at Daytona was made after team officials dissected her stock car racing debut in the ARCA race at Daytona on Saturday. The team had left the option to race up to Patrick, who wanted to assess her first race before deciding whether to enter one of the most prestigious Nationwide races of the season.

As the Izod IndyCar Series arrives in Long Beach this weekend, Danica Patrick might be driving her last IndyCar race on the city's coastal streets. Patrick, the series' most popular driver, in the last 14 months has been trying her hand at NASCAR stock-car racing in and around her IndyCar schedule and will continue doing so later this year. And with her contract with the IndyCar team of Andretti Autosport up for renewal after this season, speculation keeps mounting that she'll jump to NASCAR full time in 2012.

Her Nationwide Series debut ended when she got taken out in a 12-car wreck, an unavoidable ending to a day that never really went as planned. Yes, Danica Patrick still has plenty to learn about racing stock cars. She felt uncomfortable for a large portion of the Drive4COPD 300 on a cool and windy Saturday afternoon. She did not want to push ahead and be aggressive. She stalled once coming out of the pits. She avoided one crash early on, but could not avoid the one that took her out on Lap 68, when she tried to duck low to avoid the spinning cars in front of her. Instead, Patrick collided with the cars and slammed into the wall, then spun into the grass.

They were boos heard 'round the world, a stinging rebuke aimed at Danica Patrick at the same spot that five years earlier was the stage for making her one of the most recognized women in sports. Moments after a dreary qualifying run for Sunday's Indianapolis 500, the driver was speaking on the public-address system at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when she blamed her problems on an "absolutely awful" race car and said "it's not my fault." It was a flash point for many in the grandstands.

Reporting from Indianapolis It's media day for the drivers in the Indianapolis 500, and Danica Patrick takes her seat, flips her hair behind her shoulders and soon takes a question that gives her pause. How will the Izod IndyCar Series get along without her if she bolts for NASCAR stock-car racing next year, as is widely expected? "I don't believe I can answer that," Patrick said. "I don't know. Whether I go or whether I stay, I don't think I'm capable of answering whether or not the IndyCar series would be better or worse.

— Because the Daytona 500 is NASCAR's most prestigious race, the sport immodestly refers to the event as "the Super Bowl of stock-car racing. " But this year that tag is a drop in the torrent of hype engulfing Sunday's race because of Danica Patrick. Patrick turned the fastest lap to win the Daytona 500 pole a week ago, the first woman to earn the first starting spot for any race in NASCAR's premier Sprint Cup Series. In a matter of minutes, Patrick — and the heightened national curiosity about how she'll fare in the race itself — made this year's Daytona 500 much more compelling and ushered in "Danicamania" all over again.