Danica Patrick Hits Wall, Forced to Drive Blind After Hood Flips Up and Covers Windshield (Video)

As far as crashes go, this one has nothing on the Daytona 500-like pileups that are common to NASCAR. But it still had to be pretty freaky for Danica Patrick on Sunday when she blew out a tire and suddenly couldn’t see where she was going.

Patrick’s car lost a tire on lap 176 as she was coming out of turn four at the Subway 500 at the Phoenix International Raceway. She bounced hard off the wall and smacked into David Ragan‘s No. 34 car, which sliced open the left side of Patrick’s car. Bits of Patrick’s car started floating all over the track, and Patrick’s hood popped straight open — which, as any car driver, professional or not, knows, left her unable to see a thing.

It wasn’t the rebound that Patrick, who finished eighth at the Daytona 500, was likely looking for. She came back from the crash to finish 39th but had an unmemorable day altogether.

It’s never a fun time, after all, when you’re stuck having to use your mirrors. Check out the crash in the video below.

Photo of the Day

Oh my.

[tweet https://twitter.com/ReggieMillerTNT/status/307137916805730306 align=’center’]

Quote of the Day

“It’s frustrating. Right now, the frustrating part is you end up with 17 minutes in the penalty box when you should have been on the power play. It’s simple as that. It’s frustrating. Right now, they’ve got over 100 power plays, and it’s pretty obvious why. We’re trying to clean that out of our game, and it needs to be done soon. It’s not about tonight. It’s about the game, and the embellishment embarrasses our game, and we need to be better. It’s pretty obvious when P.K. gets hit and throws himself into the glass and holds his head. You know what? If we start calling those for embellishment, maybe teams stop doing it.”
— Claude Julien, who had some thoughts about a messy loss to the Canadiens on Sunday