EDMONTON, Alberta — A week after a confrontation with fellow driver Milka Duno that quickly became a popular YouTube video, Danica Patrick said her only regret is not thinking about how public it would be.
The incident took place in the pits at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course after Saturday’s morning practice, when Patrick walked to the wall behind Duno’s pit to talk to the Venezuelan driver about getting in her way on the track.
Duno didn’t want to talk with Patrick and kept telling her to “go away,” even tossing a towel in her direction once and then in her face before Patrick finally walked away. The incident, which lasted about one minute, was caught by an amateur photographer on video.
Thursday in Edmonton, where she will race in Saturday’s IndyCar Series event, Patrick said she should have known her efforts to talk with Duno on pit lane would become public fodder.
“I don’t think that’s something that happens every weekend,” Patrick said. “All I can do is pay attention to the situation and realize that people are watching. A time and a place for everything. . . . It’s a double-edged sword: People are always watching, but people are always watching.”
There will be no further confrontations between Patrick and Duno this week, on track or off, since Duno, driving a partial schedule this season, is skipping the Edmonton event.
F1’s Mosley wins privacy suit
LONDON — Max Mosley, head of Formula One auto racing’s ruling body, won an invasion of privacy suit against a tabloid newspaper that claimed he took part in a Nazi orgy.
High Court judge David Eady ruled the News of the World must pay Mosley $120,000 in damages, plus legal costs of an estimated $1.7 million, for the story claiming Mosley participated in a sadomasochistic sex romp with a Third Reich theme.
Mosley has acknowledged he participated in an encounter with sex workers in a basement apartment in London, but said it was private and that there were no Nazi overtones.
Mosley, 68, said the ruling exposed “the Nazi lie upon which the News of the World sought to justify their disgraceful intrusion into my private life.”
The issue is especially sensitive because he is the son of the late Oswald Mosley, Britain’s best-known fascist politician in the 1930s and a friend of Adolf Hitler.
The Associated Press
