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Danica Patrick

Danica Patrick ties record set by Janet Guthrie

Mike Hembree
Special for USA TODAY Sports
Danica Patrick finished seventh at Martinsville Speedway.

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Danica Patrick went from what she called "general disaster" to one of the best finishes of her Sprint Cup career in the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday.

Patrick finished seventh, tying her second-best career finish. Her best career run is a sixth last August at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Patrick has finished in the top 10 five times, tying the most top-10 finishes by a female in Sprint Cup history. Janet Guthrie set the mark.

"I was definitely not happy on the radio to some degree [early in the race]," Patrick said. "There was general disaster going on. I said before the race started that we can be down but we can still come back. We can keep digging and find something."

Patrick, who started 16th, dropped a lap down but rallied with a couple of mechanical changes to move into the top 10.

"We made a couple of good changes in the middle of the race that made the difference," she said. "The last 100 laps were not great, but they weren't by any means a disaster. I was proud of everyone for not giving up and keeping their head in the game."

Patrick made a smooth maneuver in the second half of the race to avoid a multi-car crash.

"The 27 (Paul Menard) got sideways, and he was just completely sideways in front of my car, and luckily I had slowed down enough and swerved to the right," she said. "It's all a matter of luck, too. I could have gotten drilled from the back and hit into the car. I could have swerved to the right and had somebody clip my right rear and spun.

"Crashes are about observing where you're at and making a good decision about where to go, but they're also about luck. I got lucky that there was nothing in my way to get around that one. That would have probably wrecked my day."

Patrick said her working relationship with crew chief Daniel Knost is evolving in a positive way. Knost moved to her team with three races left in the 2014 season.

"I was proud that today while we didn't start off quite as well, I would take this transition any day to end up with a top 10 than start off all right and struggle in the middle," she said. "The middle of the race was where we started improving, so I think this is a step in the right direction of a better trend of our communication and what we're doing, and we still learned out there."

Follow Hembree on Twitter @mikehembree

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