Danica Patrick Bud Duel quotes on Denny Hamlin

Denny Hamlin was brutally honest with Danica Patrick; handled it well

DANICA PATRICK, NO. 10 GODADDY CHEVROLET SS – Finished 10th

WHAT HAPPENED IN YOUR CONVERSATION WITH DENNY (HAMLIN)?
“First and foremost the GoDaddy car is in the (Daytona) 500 and that was what we wanted to accomplish today. Kurt (Busch) my teammate was great help at the end I went high and he was right there with me. We got a finish out of it. But I mean the incident with Denny (Hamlin) I am all about learning. I’m all about doing the right thing, but he said he needs to run close to move forward. Well you are turning me and it happened in practice too when he cut across my rear bumper. It pulls the back end around. That is why it looked like I tracked down, but I was just going down the straightaway. Here we are in the race and I’m seeing him in my mirror and he’s so tucked up underneath me, so close. I get being close, but he is then going to my left rear. It just gets it light and it spun around. I don’t want to have these issues, but if we are going to have these issues then we are going to have to deal with them. We can’t be putting ourselves out of the race on someone else’s expense. Nothing has happened to him. I like to race hard, but there is no point in being out there wrecking each other. I just wanted to let him know that I was disappointed of course. We were all in just a fine situation there in the duel running eighth or so. We were running fine and there is just no reason to get it to the point where it turns the car. Ultimately 10th and we are in the (Daytona) 500 and the stress is off. Now the other stress is on for 500 miles.”

IS THIS SOMETHING YOU ARE GOING TO CARRY ON THE CONVERSATION WITH DENNY (HAMLIN) LATER? 
“I’m sure. Like I said I’m friend with Denny. Literally his bus is right next to my bus. I’m sure that this conversation will have to go on. But I don’t think that he understands and clearly I have my opinion and he has his. I don’t think we are on the same page about it. He thinks he needs to be close and I said ‘you turned me.’ So, I know that Tony (Stewart) came down and said you need to watch the replay, which is good to hear because my boss obviously was sitting there on my pit box and saw it. I’m going to go back and look at it too, but when I watched the one from practice he cut down and when he cut down it pulled my bumper around and got us sideways. We are going to have to figure it out because this isn’t going to end well.”

- Team Chevy