As her Stewart-Haas Racing team unloaded a reserve car, Patrick emerged physically unhurt from the infield care center, but distraught after crumpling her primary No. 10 Chevrolet for the Daytona 500 in the multicar melee.

"I’m fine," Patrick said. "I’m obviously disappointed and I know that it was a good car and it’s never a good thing to crash. But, I was just riding along and it turned, so it’s the nature of pack racing and that’s what makes it challenging, too. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about it. I could have collected more people and it wouldn’t have been anything that they were a part of. But that’s just group racing at Daytona. That’s the gamble that we all face. That’s what makes it exciting and very frustrating. So, we knew we were going to have to run hard in the Duels no matter what, and that just doesn’t change." 

Patrick had completed just one full lap before jostling in the pack spoiled her day. The former Daytona 500 pole-starter was in the outside groove on the backstretch when Denny Hamlin pointed his No. 11 Toyota to the middle lane, making it three-abreast with Casey Mears on the low side. Patrick’s car darted left, making contact with Hamlin and turning her into the outside wall. 

In the aftermath, the cars of Michael Annett and rookie Jeb Burton were swooped up, both sustaining significant damage and forcing their teams to unload reserve cars. Hamlin continued with minimal impact to his Joe Gibbs Racing entry, but took his share of blame for the incident over the radio. 

"People say in practice that you can’t make aggressive moves, but we also have to put ourselves in decent positions where we’re going to have to figure out what our car is doing," Hamlin said. "I went through the middle and it was really wide — it just closed as soon as I had already got inside of her and the lane closed. It knocked me into the 13 (Mears) and we had some attrition after that." 

The incident means Patrick will start at the rear of the field in Thursday’s second Budweiser Duel qualifying heat, which will set the 43-car field for Sunday’s Great American Race (1 p.m. ET, FOX). She’ll need to finish in the top 15 in her Duel to make the 500 field without having to rely on a provisional starting berth.

"Well, I really don’t know the circumstances for the race and qualifying and back-ups," Patrick said. "I really don’t. I was fairly confused in and of itself just with what you’ve got to do to get in other than being in the Top 15 even without going to a back-up. So, I don’t know. I just know that I have to race hard and that’s the end of it." 

Hamlin’s team didn’t have to dispatch a backup car, but the 34-year-old driver was no less apologetic for bringing other drivers into the fracas.

"It’s nothing that we have to go to a backup car for, but it messed up other cars. That’s the tough part about it," Hamlin said. "You always have to give a little bit extra room in practice. There’s typically not a whole lot of blocking in practice and things like that – that you’ll see in the race. Also, you do have to go three-wide in those situations because you have to figure out what your car is going to do. That’s just a miscalculation one way or another on one of our parts. Unfortunately some cars got torn up."

Burton, aiming to compete in his first Daytona 500, said his team would likely steer clear of racing in big groups during the following practices. Though he had a front-row seat for the mix-up in front of him, he said he was helpless to avoid piling in. 

"That was the first time we actually got to get in the pack, and we were sitting there, just cruising," Burton said. "Those guys just weren’t using their noggins and wrecked in front of me, and I got run in from behind and put in the wall."

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