Danica Patrick is Pushing the Limits

Danica Patrick thrives on the chase. Driving for Andretti Green Racing, she’s always in the hunt, whether it’s climbing up in the rankings, reigniting fan interest in IndyCar or amping up her ad campaigns. She is both one of the most recognized and scrutinized female athletes in the United States for doing what she loves: pushing the limits.

Yet as Patrick chases the dream—to win races, the Indy 500, an IRL championship—veteran drivers are roaring along with her like jets on takeoff, going wheel to wheel, 2 inches apart at 220 mph in the heart- chase thudding world of open-wheel racing. She makes her living being chased. She knows it. She feels the media and marketing pros jockeying for position.

“I play hard. I always have and always will,” 27-year-old Patrick says in her 2006 autobiography, Danica: Crossing the Line, written with Laura Morton and published by Fireside. “My competitive spirit never allowed me to lay back and let anyone win. It still doesn’t. I hope it never will.”As a successful female driver in a predominantly male sport, Patrick has raced with “the media monster” since 2005, her breakout year, when she was named Indy 500 Rookie of the Year after becoming the first woman to lead at The Brickyard. She shattered several IRL records. In 2008, she made it to Victory Lane in Motegi, Japan, becoming the first female IndyCar driver to take the checkered flag. Racing aficionados coined a new phrase for the hyper-drive attention that followed: Danica mania.

Proving the Skeptics Wrong
That kind of attention has occasionally prompted other IndyCar drivers, team owners and beat writers to take shots at Patrick for her performance as a driver and for her drive to the spotlight. That never stops her from going out there and flattening the doubters.

“I’m one of those drivers who feeds off negativity a little bit, so I took all of the skeptics, all of the naysayers in the media and all of the people who didn’t believe I could win, and used them as my inspiration to go out there and show them what I’m made of,” Patrick says.

That goes for choosing the funny, edgy ad campaigns she’s been involved with as well. In 2008, she wore a white bikini for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In 2009, it was a white mustache for the “Got Milk” campaign. A TV spot for Boost Mobile has Patrick in the driver’s seat as her pit crew runs around in high heels and miniskirts.

While achieving success at a high level is a difficult process, it’s worth the chase, says Patrick, 5 feet 2 inches and 100 or so pounds, despite how deceptively tall she appeared on the hood of a Shelby Cobra in Sports Illustrated. With her animated banter and direct eye contact, long dark hair, wicked sunglasses and gripping handshake, she can draw a crowd for autographs so thick the handlers issue wristbands.

“Success doesn’t just happen. You have to go out there and make it happen. If you sit around waiting for success, it’ll never come. In the end, all you’ll be is someone just sitting around waiting,” she says.

Bring It On
As a competitor, Patrick has that chip on her shoulder that all champion drivers need to make it, says racing legend Bobby Rahal, team co-owner of Rahal Letterman Racing, which gave Danica her big break. “She’s not fearful or unwilling to face any challenge,” he says in Crossing the Line. “She not only wants the challenge, she looks for it. That’s what champions do. They go through life with a bring-it-on attitude.”

There may be a chip, but after all, she’s competing in highspeed poker. If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough, racing icon Mario Andretti has said.

Consider this unnerving challenge: At any given moment in an IndyCar race, the total area of all four tires in contact with the track is about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. If you climb into the cockpit of a 1,500-pound, high-performance racecar, you accept that both good and bad can happen, like it did in the Honda Grand Prix 2009 season opener in St. Petersburg, Fla., when Patrick crashed out early. (Rookie Raphael Matos tried to pass her. Both cars crashed.) Some days, it isn’t about you and your ability—somebody else just makes a move that runs into your decals.

Patrick’s racing dream began as early as age 9, when she saw her first go-kart. Her dad, TJ, had raced snowmobiles, midget cars and motocross bikes, and Patrick and her sister, Brooke, began racing go-karts as a way for the family to spend more time together at their home in Roscoe, Ill.

Brooke lost interest; Danica kept going. Once she found her passion, she had a one-track mind, she says. TJ became her crew chief, engineer, coach, sponsor and manager while her mom, Bev, kept statistics. Brooke was also on hand to lend moral support. During the week, the family was building a successful glass business. Patrick once told talk-show host David Letterman, the other half of Rahal Letterman Racing, that her parents sacrificed “time, money, personal lives” to support her passion. Their message: Make good decisions. Do what you think is right.

‘Think, Listen and Learn’
“My parents taught me at an early age to trust my gut—to hear and then listen to that inner voice we all have,” Patrick says in Crossing the Line. “Dad taught me to think, listen and learn—good advice that helped me strengthen my instincts. Tapping into those feelings is the key to making split-second decisions and knowing, undoubtedly, that you are right.”

At 16, while she was dominating the U.S. karting scene, she quit high school and went to England to drive Formula-style cars. Racing there was tough on every level. It was no place for wimps, crybabies or girly-girls (a line she says she borrowed from Arnold Schwarzenegger). “One of my greatest lessons was learning you need to clear the path you walk on for yourself because no one else is really interested in clearing it for you. They have their own paths,” she says. After three years, she came back to the States with a new sense of inner strength.

Patrick went several months without driving. With her dad, she worked the tracks, looking for a ride, talking to anyone who would listen. Bobby Rahal saw her potential. “Danica survived England, which is an extremely competitive environment, one that is difficult for a strong, confident young man; for a young woman, it is almost impossible,” he noted in the foreword of Crossing the Line. “There had been other women who had raced there before Danica, but it’s a hostile environment at best. That she was willing to compete there and endure all of the challenges of racing under those circumstances showed me that Danica was very certain about what she wanted and would stop at nothing to achieve it.”

Team Danica
With each racing year, Patrick retains her fierce will to win but has become more relaxed, she told Sports Illustrated’s Dan Patrick (no relation) recently. “I’m not nervous; I’m good to go for the season. I’ve learned a little bit from the year before and I’m a little more mature, able to cope with situations better. As a driver, you grow.”

The professional motorsports world has always included a business side, and Patrick understands that getting behind the wheel of her No. 7 orange-and-black Boost Mobile car includes getting in front of the cameras. Danica Racing Inc. has become big business. She must carefully balance the demands of professional racing with the need to garner attention for herself, her team and her sport. (She also needs time to take care of herself—with running, yoga and upper-body workouts.) Patrick doesn’t try to do everything herself; she’s placed her trust in a team of business professionals who manage the mania.

During a press conference just before the Bombardier 550 race at Texas Motor Speedway in June, Patrick explained to SUCCESS how her recent association with IMG (a top sports and entertainment company with clients such as Tiger Woods, Jeff Gordon, Peyton Manning and Bob Costas) has helped her develop more brand direction.

“I would love to just go to a select few people and say, ‘sponsor me,’ but it’s not that easy, so you have to take what comes as well,” said Patrick, dressed in a black polo, jeans and silver flip-fl ops. “[With IMG] it’s going really well. I think that ‘Got Milk’ was a really great thing, the cover of Shape magazine, all these things are really following in what I represent as a brand.”

Work Hard, Aim High
To preserve and protect the Danica brand, she surrounds herself with a high-functioning team of family, friends and racing pros. Her mom, Bev, is often in the pit area during a race; TJ finds a strategic position somewhere in the stands. Patrick’s husband, Paul Hospenthal, a professional physical therapist, is a stabilizing force. The AGR team—engineers, pit crew, mechanics—has worked extremely hard in 2009 and, as a result, is having a lot of fun working on the goal to win, she says.

With a strong group doing what they love, she doesn’t have to sweat the small stuff, like answering the question of whether she’ll jump to NASCAR at the end of her contract this year with AGR. She’s keeping her options open. Staying centered.

Dario Franchitti, the 2007 IndyCar Series champion, sees Patrick in the chase for the championship. “In the past couple of years, I’ve seen those kinds of fl ashes that could make it happen,” he said at Texas Motor Speedway. “The next step is to be a regular contender for wins, week in, week out. I think she’s made tremendous progress. She’s done a helluva job.”

More young women are getting into karting, and that thrills Patrick, whose mark on racing the odds is indelible. “I’m pretty much an ordinary girl who was blessed with extraordinary purpose and ambition… living proof that if you work hard and aim high, you can do whatever you set your mind to, even if that makes you different,” she says. “Take it from me. What makes you different makes you great.”

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