Patrick excited to tap into 'unrealized potential'

It's her fifth race with crew chief Daniel Knost after SHR made a crew chief swap late in the '14 season. Knost had previously worked with teammate Kurt Busch while Patrick's efforts had been under the direction of veteran Tony Gibson.
 
"It went good the last time," Patrick said Friday of her last visit to the 1.54-mile track. "It probably sucked before that. That's just the way racing is -- sometimes you're good and sometimes you're not."
 
Teams spent almost four hours on the track Thursday, testing the new 2015 rules package in two separate sessions. Patrick ended the first 18th on the board and was 14th in the final session.
 
Patrick called Thursday's efforts "a good, steady day."
 
"We found some things that were good and some ... that weren't as good," she said. "I feel like in a race weekend, if you can find one or two good changes to your race car that don't hurt it in ... any way but help it somewhere ... that you have a shot at a decent weekend and being competitive."
 
Her first outing with Knost atop the pit box "was kind of a disaster," she said, referring to a 36th-place finish in the fall race at Texas last season. But the team closed the year with a 22nd-place result on the one-mile Phoenix layout and an 18th a week later in the season-ending stop at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
 
She finished 28th in points, one spot below her 2013 results.
 
At Daytona this year, where track position is often dictated by the whims of the draft, Patrick ran as high as the top 10 as well as outside the top 25. The same could be said for many of those competing in the season-opening event.
 
She enters this weekend’s race 18th in the standings, with 83 career starts in the series. It's still a learning process, and the potential for continued improvement exists.
 
"It is our unrealized potential that is exciting to me," she said.
 
"It is my fourth year in stock cars (she ran a partial Sprint Cup schedule in '12 while competing fulltime in the XFINITY Series), and my third year in Cup. It's Daniel's sixth year in NASCAR and his second year as a crew chief. We don't have a ton of experience and you would think that there is only 'up' to go.
 
"The potential of where we could end up and where we can get to is encouraging."

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