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NNS: Hornish Comments On Patrick Incident
A Q&A on SPEED’s NASCAR Race Hub regarding the dispute at Saturday’s Talladega race.
NASCAR driver Sam Hornish said the incident with Danica Patrick at Talladega started out with a shredded tire. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Driver Sam Hornish, Jr., who’s also an analyst for SPEED Center, was involved in a dispute with Danica Patrick after Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
Once both crossed the finish line to complete the race, Patrick nudged the left-rear bumper of Hornish’s car, sending him into the outside retaining wall. Hornish had forced Patrick high when his right-front tire deflated on the final lap.
Previously, both drivers had raced against each other in the Indy Car Series.
Hornish joined host Steve Byrnes on tonight’s edition of NASCAR Race Hub:
Steve Byrnes: Lets’ talk about the end of the race with Danica. It does in fact look, and the pictures show, that your car pushed to the right. You say the car had a flat tire.
Sam Hornish: Yes. On that last restart, I got a push from the (No.) 31 (Justin Allgaier), and he just caught me in the right rear enough that it made the car turn. It turned hard right; I caught it, but actually got into (Joe) Nemechek. The tire stayed up until about halfway through the middle of three and four on the last lap. About that time, Elliott Sadler started to push me, which I was thankful for at the time because I finally had somebody to work with, and we were going to get out of this with a top 10. Right as I got (to) the exit of (turn) four, I started to hear the tire shred a little bit. A judgment call on by me, I thought that we could make it through the tri-oval without any problems, but with the speed that we had picked up with Elliott pushing me, and that tire going down, there was just nothing there by the time I got to the tri-oval.
If you look at the video real close, you’ll see that I have a whole bunch of wheel into it, trying to turn and I was actually trying to wave him (Sadler) off out the window. There was just nothing there. It was unfortunate.
Byrnes: So she (Danica Patrick) thinks that you ran her up into the wall, which is why she gets into the back of you. She’s not here to defend herself, but I think that was a dangerous thing for her to do. Describe the conversation you had with here after the race. She said you apologized.
Hornish: Yeah. That’s the tough part for me because I think the only apology I would have is that I’m sorry that my right-front tire went down while you were beside me. It ended up getting my race car wrecked after the race was over. I went up to her and said, “Hey I had a right-front tire going down.” She basically told me I was full of it. I said, “Just watch the tape. You’ll understand it once you see it.”
I was almost home on Saturday night and she called me up and said, “Hey, I saw the tape when I got to the airport. I’m really sorry for what I did after the race. Now I can see what happened there.” There was nothing for me to gain by running her up. If that would have happened to me, I would have been a little bit frustrated, but I would have also looked at the incident. You know, I lost two spots because the tire went down. I already had her beat because Elliott was pushing me. Elliott got around me and so did the car behind him. It was just one of those deals.
Byrnes: Race fans always ask me about payback. Do drivers pay back? Here’s the reality, you’re fourth in points, and you’re in the championship hunt heading to a race track in Darlington (S.C.) that is tough. You can’t spend time worrying about Danica Patrick, though.
Hornish: No. And I won’t. I feel like I’m going into this weekend race… I like Darlington and the challenge that it presents. You have one kind-of-tight corner, and you have one that’s a little more wide open. Everybody expects that, oh yeah, you’re going to have a Darlington stripe by the time the race is over.
But I think, when the light kind of flashed on for me was in 2010 when I watched Denny Hamlin go across the line and there wasn’t a scrape on that car. That’s 500 miles of running close, but he took his time, was patient, kept his car together. When it got down to the last couple of laps and everybody else’s stuff is worn out from being up against the wall, he just drove away from them because he had the extra 150 pounds of downforce.
I’m looking forward to going there. There’s no payback or whatever, it’s all about how do we get to victory lane and we gain some points on the (No.) 2 (Elliott Sadler) and the (No.) 6 (Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.) cars.
Once both crossed the finish line to complete the race, Patrick nudged the left-rear bumper of Hornish’s car, sending him into the outside retaining wall. Hornish had forced Patrick high when his right-front tire deflated on the final lap.
Previously, both drivers had raced against each other in the Indy Car Series.
Hornish joined host Steve Byrnes on tonight’s edition of NASCAR Race Hub:
Steve Byrnes: Lets’ talk about the end of the race with Danica. It does in fact look, and the pictures show, that your car pushed to the right. You say the car had a flat tire.
Sam Hornish: Yes. On that last restart, I got a push from the (No.) 31 (Justin Allgaier), and he just caught me in the right rear enough that it made the car turn. It turned hard right; I caught it, but actually got into (Joe) Nemechek. The tire stayed up until about halfway through the middle of three and four on the last lap. About that time, Elliott Sadler started to push me, which I was thankful for at the time because I finally had somebody to work with, and we were going to get out of this with a top 10. Right as I got (to) the exit of (turn) four, I started to hear the tire shred a little bit. A judgment call on by me, I thought that we could make it through the tri-oval without any problems, but with the speed that we had picked up with Elliott pushing me, and that tire going down, there was just nothing there by the time I got to the tri-oval.
If you look at the video real close, you’ll see that I have a whole bunch of wheel into it, trying to turn and I was actually trying to wave him (Sadler) off out the window. There was just nothing there. It was unfortunate.
Byrnes: So she (Danica Patrick) thinks that you ran her up into the wall, which is why she gets into the back of you. She’s not here to defend herself, but I think that was a dangerous thing for her to do. Describe the conversation you had with here after the race. She said you apologized.
Hornish: Yeah. That’s the tough part for me because I think the only apology I would have is that I’m sorry that my right-front tire went down while you were beside me. It ended up getting my race car wrecked after the race was over. I went up to her and said, “Hey I had a right-front tire going down.” She basically told me I was full of it. I said, “Just watch the tape. You’ll understand it once you see it.”
I was almost home on Saturday night and she called me up and said, “Hey, I saw the tape when I got to the airport. I’m really sorry for what I did after the race. Now I can see what happened there.” There was nothing for me to gain by running her up. If that would have happened to me, I would have been a little bit frustrated, but I would have also looked at the incident. You know, I lost two spots because the tire went down. I already had her beat because Elliott was pushing me. Elliott got around me and so did the car behind him. It was just one of those deals.
Byrnes: Race fans always ask me about payback. Do drivers pay back? Here’s the reality, you’re fourth in points, and you’re in the championship hunt heading to a race track in Darlington (S.C.) that is tough. You can’t spend time worrying about Danica Patrick, though.
Hornish: No. And I won’t. I feel like I’m going into this weekend race… I like Darlington and the challenge that it presents. You have one kind-of-tight corner, and you have one that’s a little more wide open. Everybody expects that, oh yeah, you’re going to have a Darlington stripe by the time the race is over.
But I think, when the light kind of flashed on for me was in 2010 when I watched Denny Hamlin go across the line and there wasn’t a scrape on that car. That’s 500 miles of running close, but he took his time, was patient, kept his car together. When it got down to the last couple of laps and everybody else’s stuff is worn out from being up against the wall, he just drove away from them because he had the extra 150 pounds of downforce.
I’m looking forward to going there. There’s no payback or whatever, it’s all about how do we get to victory lane and we gain some points on the (No.) 2 (Elliott Sadler) and the (No.) 6 (Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.) cars.
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