With one lap to go, Patrick was running third behind Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. The crowd was going nuts, hoping the pole-sitter could somehow pull out an improbable win.
All of a sudden, Patrick's inexperience in stock cars showed as her No. 10 car slipped back to eighth. Johnson held off Earnhardt to win the Great American Race.
Asked whether she was more elated with her eighth-place finish or more disappointed at not winning in one of the race's strongest cars, Patrick elaborated.
"I would imagine that pretty much anyone would kick themselves and say what I could have, should have done to give myself the opportunity to win," Patrick said. "I think that's what I was feeling today, was uncertainty as to how I was going to accomplish that.
"There was plenty of time while you were cruising along. I was talking to (crew chief) Tony (Gibson) and my spotter on the radio, ‘What do you see people doing? What's working? What's not?' I was thinking in the car, ‘How am I going to do this?' I didn't know what to do, exactly."
"So I feel like maybe that's just my inexperience," Patrick said of her inability to construct a winning move. "I suppose the only downside of running in that front group all day is that I never got any practice passing. I never tried really anything.
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