Danica navigates a bumpy ride
Patrick looking to stay focused amid much noise entering her 5th season
DAYTONA BEACH — Danica Patrick hears the static noise every day. She reads it, too.
She uses filters, and chooses not to engage as much on social media, but there’s always the unavoidable crossfire.
The eye-candy comments. She’s wasting track space. Stick to cooking and yoga. Get in the car and practice some more. Blah-blah-blah.
“I’m being defensive but I see this stuff on social media with people saying ‘you should be driving [in the off-season]’ That’s ridiculous,” Patrick said during a solitary moment before the start of NASCAR Media Day Wednesday.
“It’s not how it works. It not like I can say ‘hey put me in the car.’ If so we’d all be at the track all the time. But that’s not the rule because the sport is so extremely expensive. So, yeah, I do what I need to do and the rest of the time is off and I fill it. Trust me, I fill it.”
She has a clothing line (Warrior) sold on Home Shopping Network. She has her own health and wellness book, "Pretty Intense," scheduled for release in early 2018. She has her own winery (Somnium) in Napa Valley, Calif.
Her extensive outside interests are the ying to her yang, which is the racing resume.
She did not have a top-10 finish in 2016 and has yet to notch a top-5 in 154 career starts with Stewart-Haas Racing.
She’s not in any danger of losing her ride, despite the on-track challenges and recent
sponsorship issues.
Nature’s Bakery, based in Nevada and specializing in healthy products like gluten-free fig bars and dairy-free brownies, is reneging on its Cup sponsorship deal with Patrick.
The original deal — signed before the start of the 2016 season — spans three years and is worth an estimated $45 million.
The gap, a little over $30 million, has led to litigation between Nature’s Bakery and SHR.
In the interim, Aspen Dental will fill some of the void, starting with the Daytona 500, that will include “a double-digit slate of races” for the 2017 season.
“The good news is that there are also a lot of happy partners, ones who stepped up like Aspen Dental so we’re going to be fine,” she said. “It’s definitely not something you wanted to happen in January before the start of the season but we’ll get through it and continue to serve our sponsors in the same amazing fashion that we always do and deliver for them.”
Casual fans may assume this is a performance-driven issue. It’s not.
Insiders suspect it’s more of a case of a smaller company outside the NASCAR norm struggling to cut the big paychecks.
Patrick continues to move the needle in a sport that needs stars more than ever. She’s on NASCAR’s Mount Everest, along with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson.
It’d be a challenge to find a fourth who consistently stirs emotions and interests outside the inner sanctum.
Hence the noise and the pushback.
“There’s only so much you can do and as a driver, you are what you are and you do what you do,” she said. “You can change a little bit here and there, style maybe, learn different tendencies, going from IndyCar to NASCAR you learn some instinctual things or visual cues.
“You have a blueprint as a driver. That is what it is.”
At 34, Patrick is now into her fifth season in the Cup Series after making the dramatic shift from IndyCar. She has led 57 out of 43,572 laps in a Cup car.
Blueprint. Statistics. Noise.
“I want to see her do well,” said Larry McReynolds, Fox Sports analyst and a former championship crew chief. “If she could win the Daytona 500 that would probably move the needle for our sport as much as Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning it.
“But I’m a racer. When I see somebody who has been there five years, and you’re with an organization like Stewart-Haas, it’s time to rise up.”
Static noise, yet again. Danica Patrick’s dark passenger.
The ride gets a bit heavy some days.