The hard-fought result moved Patrick into 13th place in the standings entering Saturday night’s Sprint Cup race at Richmond, Virginia — well within the top-16 points cut-off that will decide the Chase field in September, only 16 points behind ninth-place Jeff Gordon.

As it stands now Patrick is ahead of preseason favorites such as Carl Edwards, Ryan Newman and Clint Bowyer, who are ranked 15th-17th, respectively. She is the second-highest ranked of her four-car Stewart-Haas Racing team, currently higher than Kurt Busch and her three-time champion car owner Tony Stewart.

Her other teammate Kevin Harvick tops the championship standings with a pair of wins and a series-best six top-five efforts in the first eight races.

Harvick’s incredible season has made him a heavy championship favorite, as is Daytona 500 champ Joey Logano and another two-time 2015 winner, six-time Cup champ Jimmie Johnson.

Their efforts this season have been top-shelf and highly regarded.

A third of the way through the 26-race regular season schedule, the favorites are emerging and based on the ranking Patrick has earned, she should be considered — at the least — on a Chase path as well.

Even if that path has been twisty and rocky.

"I didn’t think this day was ever going to end," Patrick said of Sunday’s Food City 500 in Support of Steve Byrnes and Stand Up to Cancer.

"I’m proud of everybody for keeping their heads up and staying positive, and these are the things that happen when you work together as a team. Today was a total team effort. We made good changes during the race, and the guys did a good job fixing the car as well.

"I wish we could have lined up with the leaders to see what we could have gotten there at the end, but we managed to get a top 10 with the GoDaddy Chevrolet."

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If we’re willing to call out some drivers as championship contenders based on their early season work, Patrick deserves to be given the same amount of due for her work during this span.

And it seems like the tougher the challenge, the more she has been up to the task — whether that be the Daytona 500 or manhandling her Chevy at short tracks such as Martinsville and Bristol.

She was a lap down at the daunting Martinsville paper clip but tenaciously worked her way back into the top 10. She went down a lap twice at Bristol and still managed to maneuver her way back into a good result.

While Patrick’s efforts and learning curve have been more scrutinized than most of her competitors, her six top 10s in 90 starts is absolutely on par with many of them.

Her fellow 2013 rookie campaigner — and boyfriend — two-time XFINITY Series champ Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has nine top 10s in 84 starts. Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500 but has only three top 10s in 66 starts.

Michael Waltrip had only four top 10s in his first 90 races.

Patrick’s numbers are also respectable among drivers that came from open-wheel backgrounds such as she. Sam Hornish Jr. scored seven top 10s in his first 90 starts. AJ Allmendinger had nine and Casey Mears had 12.

Patrick has always been guarded and sensible in her expectations even as fans and the racing media have developed their own Danica-standards.

The fact is she is progressing. After eight races in her rookie year she was ranked 25th — largely thanks to her eighth place showing in the Daytona 500. Last year, she was ranked 29th eight races into the schedule.

Patrick has a good perspective and never gets too high or too low, but surely this is the preferred way to roll out for the season. It’s encouraging.

"It’s always nice to start well because it seems like you spend the whole year catching up if you don’t,” Patrick said back in March. "And it seems like if you have a good start, it’s so much easier to keep it there.

"I try not to get too wrapped up in it, but it would be nice to have a bunch of top 20s and top 15s to start the year off just to have a solid foundation and try not to have any DNFs. It affects you a little bit emotionally with where you are in the garage area as a constant reminder of where you’re standing in points.

"It also affects rolling off the pit lane for the first practice. … I’ve definitely spent plenty of my Cup career waiting for a hole on pit lane for the first 20-something cars to get a run in because the track is cold. It saves time to be able to roll off pit lane right away, too.

"There are a lot of little reasons where it would be nice to start off where we can have a good points standing position for logistical reasons and confidence."

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Darby was named director of NASCAR’s premier series in 2002, a position he held until Richard Buck succeeded him in January 2014. From there, Darby has held a managing director role in NASCAR’s competition department at its Research & Development Center in Concord, North Carolina.
 
Darby got his start as a team owner in the Street Stock class at Rockford Speedway, a historic NASCAR-sanctioned track in his Illinois hometown. He eventually became a championship-winning car owner and crew chief at the track before turning his attention to the officials’ side of racing in 1982.
 
After serving as a technical official and director for several regional and touring series, Darby became a technical director in 1993 and eventually the series director in 1999 in what is now the NASCAR XFINITY Series, replacing Ray Hill.
 
In his 12-year tenure as Sprint Cup Series director, Darby played an instrumental role in several racing enhancements, including the laser inspection process and the development of the Gen-6 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series car, which debuted in 2013.

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