DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- As the halfway point of NASCARs grueling 9-month schedule approaches, Danica Patrick looks remarkably fresh. Yoga and an obsession for healthy eating are paying off for her. Patrick has always been fit, but at 34, she looks like shes found a way to trick the aging process.The question of whether that will translate to on-track success for her and new crew chief Billy Scott in 2016 will have to be answered over the final 19 races. So far, it has been a rough go, with the popular driver posting only one top-15 finish and sitting 26th in the Sprint Cup standings.Playful banter was the best Patrick could muster when asked what she wanted her midseason report to say. That I won a whole bunch of races, Patrick quipped outside her motor coach at Daytona before finishing 27th in Saturday nights Coke Zero 400.Honestly, it hasnt gone as well as I had hoped, she said. But if we could all plan our lives, that would be boring. When things go right and you get to a place where youre happy, its so much sweeter because of the hard work.A year ago, Patrick was mired in the uncertainty of a departing primary sponsor (GoDaddy) and expiring contract with championship-winning Stewart Haas Racing. The pressure was lifted in August when the race team signed her to a new contract and Natures Bakery came aboard as her primary sponsor for most of the races this year.Fans are still getting used to the blue and white livery on Patricks No. 10 Chevrolet, and Patrick is still getting used to her third crew chief in four seasons in Scott, a mechanical engineer and former driver with a reputation for patience. She had begun her NASCAR career in 2013 with savvy racing veteran Tony Gibson and was assigned engineer Daniel Knost for the final three races of 2014 and all of last year. With each new pairing comes a learning curve.I would have thought it wouldnt feel like youre starting over so much, Patrick said. But it does. And I think that some of that is Im only going to be able to drive the way Im going to be able drive, and my crew chief is only going to be able to logically think of the car in the way he has always thought of the car. So you have to find out how to mesh those two together.Scott agrees and says thats coming with Patrick.Every driver describes what theyre feeling in the car differently, and every crew chief has to communicate what theyre planning setup-wise, what youre changing and what your strategy is, Scott said. And it goes beyond just her and me. Shes familiar with most of the crew members, but I have to interact with them, too.A look at Patricks season thus far:By the numbers(Through 17 of 36 races)Average start: 25.6 (Career average: 25.8)Average finish: 23.4 (Career average: 24.6)Top 5s, top 10s, poles: 0, 0, 0 (Career: 0, 6, 1)Laps led: 8 (3 Talladega, 2 Kansas, 3 Sonoma) (Career: 35)Lead-lap finishes: 6 of 17, 35.3 percent (Career: 52 of 134, 38.5 percent)Running at finish: 14 of 17, 82.3 percent (Career: 117 of 135, 86.7 percent)Best racesThe AAA 400 Drive for Autism, May 15, Dover, Delaware: A misadventure that turned out well for Patrick. It began with a rear-end gear failure on her car five minutes into the opening practice. The No. 10 Chevy burst into flames and hit the inside and outside walls, dropping grease on the track that caused Tony Stewart and Jamie McMurray to crash. Patrick drove a backup car in the race and fell two laps down, but she and Scott never gave up. When a crash with 45 laps to go collected almost half of the field, Patrick was in position to seize the break and score a season-best 13th-place finish.Save Mart 350, June 26, Sonoma, California: Patrick qualified a season-best 11th, led three laps while the field was cycling through green flag pit stops and finished 19th. Bad luck on caution flags and questionable pit stop strategy kept her from a better finish on the California road course. I think from an overall weekend perspective, Sonoma was the most consistent we have been, Patrick said. We just were on the worst strategy for the yellows that you could possibly be on, and unfortunately, we still got about that about 20th-place finish.Low points and tough breaksDaytona 500, Feb. 21, Daytona Beach: After a strong first half to the season opening race, Patrick was undone by a pit road penalty that her team said was a bad call and a crash with 16 laps remaining. She finished 35th.Auto Club 400, March 20, Fontana, California: Patrick finished 38th after Kasey Kahne hooked her car and sent it into the wall. She was later fined $20,000 by NASCAR for walking toward the racing surface to hold out her hands to Kahne in a gesture of displeasure.Geico 500, May 1, Talladega, Alabama: A potential top-10 finish ended with what Patrick called the worst crash of her career. Bumped from behind by Michael McDowell, Patricks car veered into Matt Kenseths and then shot into the inside backstretch wall. Besides the hard impact, the No. 10 Chevy burst into flames. Looking back now, Patrick said she always goes to Talladega and Daytona with mixed feelings. I still think theyre places for hope and potential, but over time you realize how many of them end badly, and thats not a great feeling, she said.Best exchangeDan Patrick on the Dan Patrick Show last week to promote the second half of the NASCAR season on NBC: You could take Kasey Kahne, right?Danica Patrick: Oh, definitely. Theres a lot of them I could take, but Kaseys definitely one of them. I shouldve probably taken care of that at Fontana when he right-reared me at 210 (mph), but I didnt. Instead he was a little scared for a while. I didnt say a lot of hellos. But I kind of wanted to keep him right there.Off of the trackNew sponsorship has led to a couple of Patricks favorite promotions. She showed media members just how difficult advanced yoga is at Daytona in February and climbed a rock wall with a couple of contest-winning fans at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, in May.Natures Bakery has been a really fun new primary sponsor for me, Patrick said. And just the general branding itself suits me so well. GoDaddy was incredible for me and they gave me tons of brand awareness, but when you get to the core of who I am and the things I enjoy to do on a day-to-day basis in my personal life, Natures Bakery is a really incredible fit and I think has brought heightened awareness to that other side of me -- or that main part that wasnt such a big deal before.So everything in the sort of health and wellness category is all very me.Looking aheadPatrick says the pieces are in place for a much better second half of the season.Weve just got to keep putting puzzle pieces together and keep putting entire weekends together, she said. 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