NSCS: Denny Hamlin and Danica Patrick Wreck in Practice as Kyle Busch Tops Chart

A few minutes into the first practice, contact would happen between Denny Hamlin and Danica Patrick, sending Patrick into Michael Annett, while collecting Jeb Burton in the process.

After finishing eighth in last year’s Daytona 500, Patrick will go to a back-up car and start at the back of her Budweiser Duel on Thursday evening.

““It’s unfortunate,” she commented. “I know it was a car. I know it was a good coming from the shop. And with this new format that we have with qualifying and the race and everything, we knew we were going to have to race hard through the Duels anyway. That’s not going to change. It just makes extra work for everybody having to get everything ready with the other car. Hopefully we’ll get out soon and we’ll go make sure everything is all right and we’ll make sure it’s good on time.”

Patrick is hoping her team can get the car out there during today’s second practice session.

“We probably won’t get through our list of things that we wanted to try to make sure on single car runs that we were getting the most speed out of it,” she added. “But, at the end of the day when you’re in a pack, you see cars with damage all over the place and they manage to hang on just fine. So, we’ve just got to make sure everything is okay to roll for tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, Annett will be running Justin Allgaier’s backup car for the Budweiser Duels as he enters his first weekend with HScott Motorsports. Annett ran the full schedule last year for Tommy Baldwin Racing.

Hamlin would escape the wreck undamaged, though is already starting at the back of his Duel due to failing post-qualifying technical inspection.

“”I went through the middle and it was really wide – it just closed as soon as I had already got inside of her (Danica Patrick) and the lane closed,” Hamlin. “It knocked me into the 13 (Casey Mears) and we had some attrition after that.

“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. 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 is going to a backup as he enters his first year in the Sprint Cup Series driving for BK Racing. Kyle Larson would catch some front end damage with his trip through the grass, but will not go to a backup as his team makes repairs.

Kyle Busch would top the session aboard his No. 18 M&Ms Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing, ahead of Hendrick Motorsports driver Jimmie Johnson. Johnson is locked into the second starting spot for the Daytona 500 – as long as he escapes having to go to a back-up – virtue of qualifying on Sunday. Trevor Bayne was third quickest, followed by Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman.

2015 NSCS Daytona 500 Third Practice Session Speeds