CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season is one of change for Danica Patrick. Yes, she is back with Stewart-Haas Racing, but gone is the familiar GoDaddy green that adorned her No. 10 Chevrolet. Instead, the car will feature new primary sponsor Nature’s Bakery for a majority of the season.
Another notable change for Patrick is a new crew chief in Billy Scott, her third pit boss in as many seasons. So far the fourth-year driver is getting to know her new crew chief and knows that there will be a bit of an adjustment period for the new pairing once cars hit the track.
”The biggest thing we are going to have to do is just start the dialogue,” Patrick said during the SHR portion of the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour on Thursday. “It’s not going to happen until I get in the car, but what I’m feeling in the car and how that translates to a change.”
Every driver has certain changes they like more than others. That familiarity will take time to build.
”I think every driver tends to lean towards changes they feel more,” Patrick said. Later adding that a key would be “identifying from his perspective (Scott’s) what changes are really effective for me, what are game changers, what moves the needle.”
Scott spent the last two seasons as a crew chief at Michael Waltrip Racing. He closed out last season on Clint Bowyer‘s No. 15 Toyota that made the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. So far for him, the early returns have been promising.
“Right now, it’s just feeling good about our communication and she is very technically based,” Scott said. “She wants to know what’s going on. She likes looking through data, so I think having an engineering background and being able to communicate on setup-related stuff on an in-depth level, I think that would be good.”
During his time at MWR, Scott worked quite a bit with Rodney Childers, the championship-winning crew chief for the No. 4 team of Kevin Harvick. Childers thinks that the new addition is a perfect fit for Danica.
“I think the two of them, their personalities are perfect together,” Childers said. “I said that awhile back and I guess you could say, I kind of pushed it along a little bit. You got to have that magic. Somebody you can talk to every minute of everyday about anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s about race cars, about life, about your family or whatever.
“It’s all about having that relationship and being able to communicate and having people that want to be around you and pulling on the same rope all the time. I feel like they will have that. You can tell already when you are around them and the way they talk to each other.”
Patrick enters the 2016 campaign coming off her best finish in the final standings, 24th, but she knows there is plenty to be done to take the next step in her career and to make the 16-driver Chase.
”In 2014, I feel like we finished off the season with (crew chief) Tony Gibson solidly being top 15, top 10 and being relatively pretty fast every weekend,” Patrick said. ”I feel like with Daniel (Knost) being a new crew chief in a new situation last year, I feel like we didn’t quite achieve that all the time. Sometimes we were there. Sometimes we were worse than that. That was a step back from ’14.
”I’d like to get back to that top-15 running of where you have a good day and you are in the top 10. Once you start doing that regularly, then you have a chance to win. Obviously, top 15, lead lap every weekend and running competitively is where we need to be to start making things happen and making a run at the Chase.”
The Sprint Cup Series season is a 26-race marathon to the end of the regular season with a 10-race elimination sprint to the finish. Scott believes maintaining that perspective and not reacting too high or too low is key to their success.
“It’s a long year,” Scott said. “You got to be able to keep that in perspective. I don’t think you want to be too quick to judge a season going in a good or bad direction really. We are just going to focus long term. Plan to be together hopefully several years, sponsors signed for several years. Just want to take each race as a learning experience and keep building on that from week to week and race to race at each track.”