Hitting the bricks:
Danica Patrick plans to retire from racing after next year’s Indianapolis 500.
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — She started in go-karts when she was 10, and was a national champion two years later. By the time Danica Patrick turned 16, she was on her own in Europe, pursuing a racing career.
Patrick was a fearless woman in a sport almost exclusively comprised of male drivers. She raced hard, sparred with her rivals off the track and rarely flinched while becoming one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. Her tough-girl persona almost never cracked in public. When it came time to announce her retirement, with her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, boyfriend and support team watching from the back of a crowded room at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday afternoon, Patrick broke down in tears.
“I feel like this is where my life should be headed, and sometimes we just get kind of nudged there,” she began. “Sometimes it’s big nudges and sometimes it’s little.”
The 35-year-old Patrick paused several times to compose herself to announce that she will race only in the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500 next year and then she will walk away.
Patrick has known for at least a month that she will end her career next season at the Indianapolis 500, a decision that will bring her full circle and return her one last time to the storied track that made her famous.
Patrick told the Associated Press that it took her many months to come to the realization her career is all but over. Once she accepted it, she began putting together plans for “The Danica Double” over the last several weeks.
Her career crossroads was put in motion when GoDaddy left auto racing after 2015, then new sponsor Nature’s Bakery was unable to fulfill its three-year commitment to SHR and Patrick. The team pieced together sponsorship all year, but the deal for Almirola next year made Patrick expendable.
“I didn’t want to be pushed into anything, and everyone can relate, sometimes things just shift and change around you,” she told AP. “Especially with me and the sponsor situation. I’ve never been there before. I’ve always had a sponsor. It forces you into thinking about things and nothing was lining up easily. If I don’t feel like I can run better than where I am, then I don’t want to do it. And, there have been times that I could not have been more miserable.
“That’s not why I come, and I feel like it takes away from everything else I accomplished. I don’t want to be remembered for the things that didn’t go as well. I want to be remembered for the things that went well.”