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AUTO RACING: Danica Patrick makes first trip to Gateway

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ Coming off of a Nascar Nationwide series career-best twenty-first place finish at Charlotte, Danica Patrick came to Gateway International Raceway this past weekend looking to continue the learning experience that has been her 2010 season.

The 5-hour Energy 250 at the Madison, Illinois race track was the ninth in a stock car this season for the 28-year old Patrick, who began (and continues) her major motorsports career on the Indy Car circuit.

"I know on the NASCAR schedule, there&#39;s a lot of short ovals, and it&#39;s going to be important for me to learn them and get good at them," Patrick said on Friday afternoon. "And this is one of those tracks, so I&#39;m excited to learn it and hopefully it goes well."

Patrick received some damage during a big pileup on the front stretch near the midway point of Saturday&#39;s race and finished twenty-second, just off her career best at Charlotte, but not quite where she&#39;d like to be.

"I do feel like I&#39;ve made a lot of progress. I didn&#39;t set, necessarily, goals for myself, because I didn&#39;t know what to set," she said. "Since the middle of it, I&#39;ve been clear in saying that top 15s are our goal for the rest of the year. It&#39;d be good to get a couple of those."

"I think we&#39;ve had some chances this year, especially at Fontana a couple weeks ago, which would have been really nice to have. It&#39;s always nice to have the results for, shoot, media purposes and for, I guess, my own ego at some point."

While the numbers aren&#39;t quite where she&#39;d like them to be yet, Patrick insists she&#39;s getting more comfortable with the circuit, and with her race car.

"I know that I&#39;ve learned as I&#39;ve gone along, and that&#39;s important," said Patrick. "I feel more comfortable in the car for sure. I feel a little more under control. I feel like it&#39;s coming at me a little slower than it did in the very beginning. I feel like I&#39;m getting somewhat of a grasp of what I need from the car to perform well in the race."

"I have a long way to go, but at least I&#39;m feeling some of those indicators inside the cockpit."

Even though the Indy Car (CART) series came to Gateway for an annual race from 1997 to 2003, Patrick didn&#39;t arrive on the scene until 2005, so this past weekend&#39;s visit to GIR was her first, but not the first for many members of her race team.

"It&#39;s important to talk about the track a bit and its tendencies," Patrick said. "I actually was going back and forth with my spotter, when I run the companion races. T.J. (Majors), who&#39;s Dale Jr&#39;s spotter, and he was giving me tips on this place. So that kind of stuff is really important. And (crew chief) Tony (Eury) Jr. will tell me too."

"It&#39;s been nice that we&#39;ve been to a couple of these short tracks that Tony Jr. can have an idea of what I need in the setup of the car, so that&#39;s it&#39;s comfortable for me when I go out there."

A Roscoe, Illinois native, Patrick dropped the ceremonial puck before Friday night&#39;s Blackhawks-Blues contest at Scottrade Center, but didn&#39;t want to pledge total allegience to either squad. She also admitted to a &#39;Cardinal&#39; sin when asked about being a St. Louis baseball fan.

"See the problem is, I&#39;m also a Cubs fan, and I know that&#39;s not okay," she said reluctantly.

"I&#39;ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of people in sports along the way. I know Tony LaRussa, Albert Pujols, and some of the players I knew from a few years ago have left. They&#39;re really nice people, really great people. So I cheer for them. I don&#39;t know as many Cubs players, and managers and such. But, it&#39;s the home team. I grew up near Chicago."

After first hinting she might support her hometown-area and 2010 Stanley Cup Champion Blackhawks by wearing their team colors on Friday night, Patrick reconsidered.

"I&#39;ve been booed before, and I don&#39;t really like it," she said."Go with the Blues? Okay. You got it. (Laughter)"

Danica&#39;s ownership, JR Motorsports, recently announced that Patrick will return to drive the first four races of the 2011 Nationwide season in the No. 7 Chevrolet, an opportunity the highest female finisher ever in an Indy 500 relishes.

"I have to give credit to JR Motorsports for the opportunity to drive one of their cars," she said. "That worked so well with my existing sponsor, GoDaddy, and the fact they had a relationship with Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. already. So that made that transition very easy and very nice."

"The behind the scenes world of racing gets very difficult with sponsorship, the competing categories, and things like that and can be a lot of work. But GoDaddy and JR Motorsports really facilitated that. So other than that, it&#39;s just being a racecar driver and watching the races and wanted to see what the racing was all about. It looks really fun on TV, and I&#39;m finding out that it is fun."