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So she wrecked three times and finished 38th in the Daytona 500, at least she finished and no wrecks were her fault. Still her impact was up in the stratosphere in terms of the NASCAR television viewers.
Overall, FOX television averaged an estimated 14.24 million viewers for Monday primetime when the rain delayed Daytona 500 finally got underway, along with an 8.2 rating/12 share.
For comparison, Fox averaged a 5.0 final Nielsen rating and 8.6 million viewers for its 13 Sprint Cup Series telecasts this season, up 4.2 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively, from a 4.8 rating and 7.8 million viewers over 11 races last year.
In other words, 14.24 million tuned in for the Danica Patrick Daytona 500 show, an increase of over 5.6 million viewers from the most recent Fox NASCAR races.
She wasn't the only one making media history at the race. When the jet fuel explosion brought the race to a standstill on the 160th lap, fellow NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski grabbed his phone and started tweeting on Twitter. During the delay his eyewitness Tweets helped boost his Twitter following from 65,000 to 200,000 followers.
But that wasn't what made history. He was the first driver to ever tweet from the race track during a race, even though he was parked on the track waiting for the restart.
His staggering number of followers still left him far behind the new kid on the block, Danica Patrick, who brought over half a million Twitter followers with her to Daytona.
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