As I said previously, I am not an auto racing fan. I had obligations that precluded me from watching the Daytona 500 yesterday. However, in full candor, if it had been Masters Sunday, I rearrange those obligations so I could be in front of my television.

I did follow the race on Twitter. When I saw that Danica Patrick was in contention, you knew it was going to be a good day for Fox Sports.

Sure enough, the overnight ratings produced a seven-year high at 10.0, up 30 percent from the 7.7 in 2012 and 22 percent from 8.2 in 2011.

The race peaked with a 12.8 rating from 4:30-4:45 p.m. (ET), when the channel flippers tuned in to see Patrick down the stretch. She definitely came through for Fox and Nascar.

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The bigger story from the weekend was the horrific crash on Saturday. Richard Deitsch of SI.com felt Fox did a terrible job in reporting the aftermath on Sunday.

He wrote/blasted:

Fox Sports dutifully played the role of Captain Louis Renault yesterday during its pre-race coverage of the Daytona 500. Working as auxiliary PR for NASCAR, the network gave short shrift to the 12-car accident during Saturday’s Nationwide Series race that injured at least 28 fans in the Daytona International Speedway grandstands (My colleague Lars Anderson called it the worst racing incident he had witnessed involving injured fans in his 10 years on the NASCAR beat.)

Race announcer Mike Joy did read over a 20-second highlight of the crash early in the pre-race show and included a one-sentence mention of those injured (“We are ready to race, but 14 people were taken to local hospitals, two of them critically injured,” said Joy.) Viewers then saw plenty of packaged features, from the debut of the Generation 6 car (which touched on safety but only in positive strokes) to an interview with Brad Keselowski that painted him as NASCAR’s James Dean to live music from the Zac Brown band.