The spotlight is nothing new. But never has it been this bright before.

Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole Sunday, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any race in NASCAR’s premier circuit. It’s by far the biggest achievement of her stock-car career.

“I was brought up to be the fastest driver, not the fastest girl,” she said. “That was instilled in me from very young, from the beginning. Then I feel like thriving in those moments, where the pressure’s on, has also been a help for me. I also feel like I’ve been lucky in my career to be with good teams and have good people around me. I don’t think any of it would have been possible without that.

“For those reasons, I’ve been lucky enough to make history, be the first woman to do many things. I really just hope that I don’t stop doing that. We have a lot more history to make. We are excited to do it.”

Her latest stamp in the history books came with a lap at 196.434 mph around Daytona International Speedway. Patrick went out eighth in the qualifying session, then had to wait about two hours as 37 fellow drivers tried to take her spot.

Only four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon even came close to knocking her off. Gordon was the only other driver who topped 196 mph in qualifying. He locked up the other guaranteed spot in next week’s season-opening Daytona 500.

“It’s great to be a part of history with Danica being on the pole,” said Gordon, who joked that at least he was the fastest guy. “I think we all know how popular she is, what this will do for our sport. Congratulations to her. Proud to be on there with her.”

The rest of the field will be set in duel qualifying races Thursday.

However the lineup unfolds, all drivers will line up behind Patrick’s No. 10 Chevrolet SS.

And she knows her latest achievement will mean more public relations work.

The routine is nothing new for Patrick, who was the first woman to lead laps in the Indianapolis 500. She finished third in 2009, the highest finish in that illustrious race for a woman. And she became the only woman to win an IndyCar race when she did it in Japan in 2008.

Hardly anyone witnessed that victory.

Leading the field to the green flag in NASCAR’s showcase event should be must-watch television.

“That’s a huge accomplishment,” team owner and fellow driver Tony Stewart said. “It’s not like it’s been 15 or 20 years she’s been trying to do this. It’s her second trip to Daytona here in a Cup car. She’s made history in the sport. That’s stuff that we’re proud of being a part of with her. It’s something she should have a huge amount of pride in.

“It’s never been done. There’s only one person that can be the first to do anything. Doesn’t matter how many do it after you do, accomplish that same goal. The first one that does always has that little bit more significance to it because you were the first.”

Even before her fast lap Sunday, Patrick was the talk of Speedweeks. Not only did she open up about her budding romance with fellow Sprint Cup rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but she was considered the front-runner for the pole after leading practice sessions Saturday.

And she didn’t disappoint.

She kept her car at or near the bottom of the famed track and gained ground on the straightaways, showing lots of power from a Hendrick Motorsports engine.

“It’s easy to come down here in your first or second year as a driver and clip the apron trying to run too tight a line or do something and scrub speed off,” Stewart said. “That’s something she did an awesome job. Watching her lap, she runs so smooth. … She did her job behind the wheel, for sure.”

The result surely felt good for Patrick, especially considering the former IndyCar driver has mostly struggled in three NASCAR seasons. Her best finish in 10 Cup races is 17th, and she has one top-five in 58 starts in the second-tier Nationwide Series.

She raced part-time in 2010 and 2011 while still driving a full IndyCar slate. She switched solely to stock cars last season and finished 10th in the Nationwide standings.

She made the jump to Sprint Cup this season and will battle Stenhouse for Rookie of the Year honors.

Starting out front in an unpredictable, 500-mile race doesn’t guarantee any sort of result, but securing the pole will put her in the limelight for at least the rest of the week.

She also won the pole at Daytona for last year’s Nationwide race.

This is considerably bigger.

The previous highest female qualifier in a Cup race was Janet Guthrie. She started ninth at Bristol and Talladega in 1977.

“It’s obviously a history-making event that will last a long, long time,” Guthrie said, praising Patrick’s feat. “It’s a different era, of course. Different times. I can’t imagine what I would do with a spotter or somebody telling me how to drive. It’s rather a different sport now. Back then, there was a much greater difference from the front of the field to the back.”

Guthrie received a lukewarm reception from fellow drivers back then.

Patrick was much more welcomed, undoubtedly because of her background and popularity.

She’s comfortable being in the spotlight, evidenced by her racing career, her television commercials and her sudden openness about her personal life.

“I think when pressure’s on and when the spotlight’s on, I feel like it ultimately ends up becoming some of my better moments and my better races and better results,” Patrick said. “I just understand that if you put the hard work in before you go out there that you can have a little peace and a little peace of mind knowing that you’ve done everything you can and just let it happen.”

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“It would have been a good chance,” team owner Rick Hendrick said on Saturday at Daytona International Speedway. “As a matter of fact, I’m sure they might have.”

Hendrick, the owner of Hendrick Motorsports and one of the top owners of automobile dealerships in the United States, made the comment during the unveiling of the 2014 Chevrolet SS production car that will debut in NASCAR this season.

“When Mark took over, he said if we’re going to be in the sport it needs to be relevant,” Hendrick said of Mark Reuss, the president of General Motors North America. “That’s when everybody started talking and Ford and Toyota.

“But Mark pushed the button with NASCAR and I’m glad that he did. It sure paid off.”

NASCAR president Mike Helton said Chevrolet led the charge two years ago for a return to manufacturer identity that was lost with the CoT that was used from 2007 through last season.

“Mark kind of voiced that, that if we can’t be relevant we don’t race,” Hendrick said. “We had a lot riding on that, and we needed it anyway. We had beaten that COT to death.”

NASCAR introduced fuel injection to its cars last season because manufacturers wanted it, then worked with Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota to make the body of the cars look like those on the showroom floor for this season.

“They backed us in a corner and said, ‘Here’s what you guys need to think about doing,'” Helton said.

Reuss tempered his comments on whether Chevrolet would have left the sport were it not for the changes.

“Any really successful motorsports activity has to have a really good technical focus on what you’re racing, great personalities that drive it, wonderful people running the teams and the great fan bases will come,” he said.

“Once you start losing any one of those things there’s dangerous things that happen. To get these fuel injected, to get them looking like cars you can buy again … and to have people understand what they are and what they represent from a brand and driver standpoint, that’s what we were working on.”

Hendrick said it was time for the CoT to go even though he won 60 races and four titles — all with Jimmie Johnson — with it.

“Wins are one thing,” Hendrick said. “But if the fans don’t like it and the manufacturers don’t like it, we can’t survive that way. The fans grew up, I grew up, going to the track wanting to outrun the Fords and the Pontiacs and all those guys. I think we missed that.

“The CoT, we had a lot of success with it and won championships with it, but it was time to get back to our roots and a production car we could race.”

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