By Bruce Martin
NSSN Correspondent
FORT WORTH, Texas — Maybe Danica Patrick should pick a fight more often.
After she was part of a week-long controversy with Dan Wheldon when she got in his face for driving her off the track in last Sunday’s IndyCar race at Milwaukee, Patrick scored her career-best finish when she was third in Saturday night’s Bombardier Learjet 550k at Texas Motor Speedway.
Take that, Wheldon, who wasn’t around at the end of the race because he was involved in a six-car pileup on lap 197 after A.J. Foyt IV lost a wheel.
Wheldon led four times for 52 laps and would have been a factor for both Patrick and race-winner Sam Hornis,h Jr. if he had avoided the crash.
On this night, Patrick could savor her best finish yet, as she came close to becoming the first female driver to win an IndyCar race.
“Yeah, this is a recurring thing, isn’t it?” Patrick said. “There’s a story and all of a sudden I have a season best to go off of.”
That led her Andretti Green Racing teammate and second-place finisher Tony Kanaan to quip, “You should get mad more often.”
Patrick had to put up with the replays of her angrily confronting Wheldon and grabbing his arm as he walked away from her last week at Milwaukee. She was angered over the fact he had cut her off earlier in the race when she was about to pass him and that drove her off the track.
So, with banners around Texas Motor Speedway proclaiming this as “The Rumble at the Speedway – Danica versus Wheldon,” she picked a great time to respond on the race track.
“It was really a matter of time,” Patrick said. “I think we’ve had fast cars throughout the season, and it was a matter of getting more on the same page with my engineer and just having everything come together.  We just didn’t have very much time before the season started to really mesh together. He basically couldn’t read my mind at the start of the season.
“I really feel like the traffic part of the job and passing cars has improved.  And heck, are you kidding me? I’m taking notes from Tony; he’s like the king of it.”