Daytona 500

Danica Patrick

This time a year ago, Danica Patrick was among the lead pack after starting from pole.

Twelve months on, she's had a more muted start to her season but has spent recent weeks in the headlines (as ever) after Richard Petty suggested she would only win a race if no one else was running.

Dale Earnhardt Jr was just one of the drivers who jumped to her defence, though only after paying due deference to Petty:

"I thought it was just a little rough on Danica. You can't call out 'the king' because he's the king and he's such a patriarch and an icon in our sport and he has tonnes of wisdom and insight and is a guy that everyone respects and he's done a lot for this sport and still does today...

"But at the same time Danica deals with more criticism than anyone has ever faced in this sport and that's unfortunate.

"It seems like she's always having to answer to something like that and that's a pain in her butt.

"She's really strong willed when it comes to those type of things because I think she's dealt with it from day one. When you here something like that you're a bit taken aback by it and why someone would be so critical but she's probably dealt with it forever.

"But regardless of how she handles it, I think he was being a little rough there."

Daytona's floodlights mean there's no real time constraint today. As long as there's enough of a gap in the rain, this race can run as late as it needs to get 200 laps in.

So that means we might end up with a night race. After adding a Duel win to his Unlimited victory, Hamlin insisted you couldn't judge 500 form from those races as conditions were different at night:

"I think practice will probably give us a little better sense of [form]. The cars drove a lot different [in daytime]. They moved around a lot.

"I'm not necessarily sold on the idea that whatever's worked here these few night races is going to be what you'll roll out for the 500.

" I think chassis handling will play a factor, especially if we're going to run this long on a set of tyres."

But now Joe Gibbs might be reverting back to that night set-up that's worked rather well this week so far...

Kevin Harvick's summary of the early laps: "We're just hanging out so far."

Yeah, this does tend to be a race where what you do in the first 199.5 laps doesn't matter too much...

Greg Biffle is talking about his brush with the wall earlier:

"I can't believe I saved it. It was the save of a lifetime, I can tell you that.

"Luckily enough we were able to get back with hardly any more damage, got four tyres on it, and the caution came out, which got us back on the lead lap."

Truex adds: "This was probably my best shot to win the Daytona 500".

Truex is telling reporters about his engine failure:

"It was definitely an engine. What a shame. We had such a fast racecar. I was really happy with it today.

"This car was much better than the car we raced on Thursday night. The car was super-fast.

"I wish we could've hung around all day to see what it could've done at the end."