Danica Patrick has spoken candidly about the accident that claimed the life of her Rahal-Letterman Racing teammate Paul Dana and says that despite the tragic events of last Sunday morning at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, Dana's death hasn't dimmed her desire to succeed. source: crash.net The 24 year-old Patrick, who passed the scene of the incident moments before Dana's car ploughed into the side of Ed Carpenter's stationary machine, said that she was surprised at how well 30 year-old Dana had been driving for his new team and at his ability to get sponsorship without having his own personal pot of gold. "Everything happened really fast the other day," said Patrick during a press conference on Tuesday. "From our standpoint, as far as the car goes, we were getting things together. We were looking forward to the race. We qualified third, which was much better than earlier in the weekend. Paul (Dana) came along with that, too. He was inching his way up the speed charts with us, and then the accident happened." Television cameras captured Patrick's reaction to TV replays of the crash, and shortly afterwards her Rahal-Letterman team chose to withdraw their remaining two cars from the race, a decision that Patrick did not disagree with. "I don't think you can ever question the decision that your boss makes. If he would have said 'race' or 'don't race,' that's what I would have done. I race for him. I think he did a very, very good thing. This is life. We drive racecars, and it's what we love, and it's our job, but we don't walk out there a couple minutes afterwards and say, 'I've forgotten already.' I don't think that anybody can critique the fact that he said don't race. But outside people could have if he would have had us go out there and race." The second round of the 2006 IRL IndyCar Series takes place this weekend on the streets of St Petersburg in Florida, an event that Patrick and teammate Buddy Rice will both compete in. The fact that the race is a street race and not a high-speed oval thrill ride is a good thing according to Patrick as the series, as well as its teams, drivers and fans try and work through Dana's death. The complete article here at Crash.net
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