Danica Patrick became NASCAR’s highest finishing female competitor in 2011 with a fourth-place finish at Las Vegas. She set another record for her gender as a fulltime NASCAR Nationwide Series competitor in the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet during the past season – the first female to produce a top-10 finish (10th) in a national series. Patrick’s 17th-place performance at Phoenix, her last of 10 premier series starts, readied her for a NASCAR Sprint Cup rookie campaign in 2013. (Getty Images)
Written by: NASCAR/ Getty Images, September 7, 2012