VIDEO: Danica Patrick On Trackside Live Danica Patrick from Las Vegas. (Image: SPEED)

Darrell Waltrip "Danica the guy that you would have to give a lot of credit to for bringing you to Indycars, was Bobby Rahal and I love him because when I first met him I thought he was from Alabama and his name was Bobby Ray Hall. I didn’t know it was Bobby Rahal. But he is a really great guy and he gave you a great opportunity. I’m sure you have kind things to say about him."

Danica Patrick "That’s for sure. You know, he took a chance, let’s face it, he took a chance on me and put me in an Indycar and thank goodness it went all right! He was always there, and had good cars for me and let me show what I could do with it. So you know, sometimes I wish I could go back and take that first Indy 500 car and bring my experience to it but you can’t do that. So I am really grateful for everything he did, everything. Good man."

Darrell Waltrip "I just want to make note now I’m sitting by Miss Patrick for
the record."

Jeff Hammond "And you know why? Because I’m a gentleman and I wanted to you have the same pleasure I did."

Darrell Waltrip "There’s more to this story."

Danica Patrick "I should have put some perfume on tonight or something. I didn’t know I would be some kind of a hot ticket tonight."

Darrell Waltrip "No, no, you can sit here over here by Byrnes for a little while."

Darrell Waltrip "Danica, we know you have a lot on your plate with this NASCAR deal with 11 or 12 Nationwide Series races but the big dots on radar, you finished third last year at Indy, you finished fifth in points. I was looking on your website and that deal is still the big dot on radar."

Danica Patrick "I’m doing the full Indycar series so that’s still the primary focus for this year. It’s just definitely front loaded with NASCAR and back loaded with NASCAR. So unfortunately, after tomorrow, I’ll be gone for quite a few months. I won’t be back until after the Indy 500 but I really want to win the Indy 500. It is just such a cool race. Have you ever been to the Indy 500 before? [cheering] there’s nothing like 33 cars going 230 miles an hour down the front straight. Now, I haven’t been to the Brickyard so I can’t say. But for me that’s just an amazing race."

Darrell Waltrip "You were back testing just this week since the California weekend right."

Danica Patrick "I was, yes. It was a lot of days on track for me in the last couple weeks. We were testing at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama it is near Talladega actually."

Darrell Waltrip "That’s where my people are from.

Danica PatrickOkay, I don’t know that means."

Jeff Hammond "Don’t ask."

Darrell Waltrip "How did the test go?"

Danica Patrick "It went crap, it did, I didn’t have a good day. I didn’t have two good days. We just couldn’t get the car dialed in. It was just like last week at Fontana. I felt loose on entry, I felt like I couldn’t get it in there and that’s how I felt."

Darrell Waltrip "You didn’t move your steering on that car, did you?"

Danica Patrick "Actually when I got back into the Indycar at Sebring a few weeks ago I brought it closer to me. How about that?"

Darrell Waltrip "I like that, see, I told you! You are letting me down because I said after you get finished doing this, you will be a better Indycar driver because I felt like it was another place to draw information from that might help you with your Indycar."

Danica Patrick "And I agree with you but sometimes there’s nothing you can do about a car that doesn’t to what you want it to, though. And Barber is a tough track with long slow corners, so you got to get the car to rotate but then there’s there are really fast corners so if you get the car to rotate though the slow corners, it is way too quick through the fast. So it’s a real balancing act and I do think it’s going to help and I did bring some ideas to the test last week or earlier this week, about balance. These cars don’t have a lot of grip and they slide around so you really need to have the balance on that car so I’m bringing that concept to Indycar a little bit more, we just didn’t hit it."

Darrell Waltrip "Lower the track bar down."

Danica Patrick "I actually had Tony go through all the things we did today so I knew what it meant. Because heck if I know what that stuff means. I am like, I'm loose, fix it, I’m tight, fix it, and then I do find that my understeer-oversteer, tight -push words kind of blend overlap and I feel really bad but I’m trying not to seem stubborn and like not say the right words in the right places but there is crossover."

Darrell Waltrip "You’re definitely a driver."

Danica Patrick "Like you know what I mean! Just fix it!"