#1065 - Danica Patrick

Hi.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.

I'm excited to be here.

You're an intense lady. You got a lot of intensity. When I met you, like, right away, I'm like, whoa, got to take this one in.

Well, you know, it's the handshake, and then it's the, you know, when someone actually looks you in the eye, well.

You have to be intense. I mean, what you do for a living is probably one of the craziest things a human being can do.

Do you think so?

It's up there for a job. How fast do you go?

200. NASCAR's top speed is probably 215 Indy cars, maybe more like 240. And I'm going to do the Daytona 500 next month and then the Indy 500 in May. So those are going to be my last two races.

The last ones ever?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. This is my Danica double goodbye tour.

Why are you doing that? How come you're doing a Danica double goodbye? Is it enough? Is enough?

I'm ready. I mean, I love racing, but I love other things, too. So I'm okay with transitioning out. And there was a lot of things that were kind of just pointing me in this direction in 2017. Stuff that has never happened to me before, to kind of head towards the exit a little bit. But I'm good with it. I'm a very decisive person. So this is probably one of them that I thought about a little bit as far as how to be done or if to be done, I guess. But the how was the hardest part. My agent kept calling and saying, what about this? And what if you did that? And I'm like, no, you all need to get ready for me to be done, please.

Wow.

So then he came up with the. He's like, what if you finish up at Daytona for the 500? And I was like, what about the Indy 500? And he goes, and I was really only referring to the Indy 500. And he was like, well, I'd love you to do both. I was like, oh, well, that's a good idea. So there's this thing in racing called the double, which is doing the Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend on Sunday, and then flying straight to Charlote to do the coke 600 afterwards. And that's kind of known as the double. But this is what we're calling the Danica double. And it has to do with just having spent a chunk of my career in IndyCar and a chunk of my career in NASCAR, and it just kind of feels like the right way to go out. I don't know. It wasn't clear. It was a bit of a murky end as far as what's going to happen. Am I going to race next year full time or not? And it just kind of went too long for me to have, like, a proper, I'm done sort of moment in my head. So this was just a great way to do it.

So when you say that things happen in 2017 that didn't happen before, what do you mean?

Like, I had a sponsor leave me. My primary sponsor left at the beginning of the year. I mean, I signed a contract when mercury was in retrograde, so I screwed myself there, but believe that stuff, I don't know. It was true. So I guess maybe the universe is a little bit more straightforward than we think it is.

I think a lot of good things probably happened during that time in 2017 or during retrograde. Mercury and retrograde. I don't believe in any of that shit. I think people look for some sort of hidden meaning to things when it comes to astrology.

Yeah, I do try and understand it. I'm trying to understand how it really matters, but I don't know. There's definitely some things, at least with the moon, that goes on. I mean, the water changes with the moon, so doesn't that mean that other things should, too, whether it be energetically or something like that?

I think the water and the moon thing kind of makes sense a little bit. A little bit. But I think it's probably just like, barely one way or the other.

Yeah, maybe it's a whisper on the wind kind of stuff.

I think it's more in your head.

So stop putting my crystals outside to charge under the full moon. Maybe not so important.

I would say it's not that important. There was something someone sent me about the army using crystals, and I was like, this has got to be like an onion article that the army was using crystals for. See? Think if you could find that.

Wait a minute.

For wounded people? Yeah. Look at this. Stupid. Even I'm not sure if it's real. Us Army's new holistic medics. Treating gunshot wounds with crystals and essential oils is satire. Thank you, thank you.

Essential oils. Don't you think there's a plant that cures everything out there?

There probably is something like that in the Amazon that maybe not cures everything, but there's probably a lot of stuff that we.

That's where essential oils come from, right?

Yeah.

So pair that up with some high vibrational stones.

High vibrational stones intense.

Back to my sponsor leaving me.

So your sponsor leaving you, you were like, that's it.

It's just never happened to me before. I've always been someone that's been really well funded and always had a sponsor. Always had a sponsor and never a problem. And so, yeah, it was just things like that were happening. I got into a few big wrecks in a row, like, probably three and six weeks that were like. I was bawling in the medical center after the third one going. I mean, I was running, like, top ten, and a car blew a rotor and clipped me and put me in the wall. I was on fire. Another driver broke his back. I mean, it was a huge accident. And I'm like, what is the message? What is someone trying to tell me right now? And so after I collected my shit and got my face looking, like, halfway decent to go talk to the media out there, I finally got out. But, yeah, just stuff like that was happening, and I was in a very go with the flow mood in 2017. I wasn't pushing for anything because I wasn't really sure what I wanted, so I just let the universe take care of it.

You've got a very interesting way of looking at things. When things go wrong, you're like, what is the universe trying to tell me? You're not? Like, well, I drive really fucking fast for a living, and sometimes shit goes wrong.

That happens, too.

I mean, it seems like car racing is just inherently crazy. I mean, it's what I was saying when I was saying you do one of the craziest things you can for a living. Going 240 miles an hour is no joke. And metal and rubber and things just.

You got to trust in something when you're out there because you're doing, like you said, 200 plus miles an hour with people that aren't your friends around you, with walls around you as well. So you kind of got to put your trust in something else.

Yeah, that's why I was getting at that, because I think the way you think is a lot. It's very similar to the way fighter pilots think. Fighter pilots have a lot of weird superstitions, and a lot of pilots do a lot of people that are involved in intense things. It's almost like in order to get through the task at hand, you almost have to delegate certain aspects of reality to fate or to chance or to.

Right, yeah, I believe that. Yeah, I have a tattoo on my back, one of his. It's an american flag. I got that when I was 19. It's like an american flag that fades to a checkered flag. And then I got that when I was 19. Then when I was about 27, I went and got the rest, which was angel wings and some stars. And it's not the most beautiful piece of art, but it means something to me. It won't be really beautiful in 30 years. I'm sure 40. But, yeah, my point is that I would definitely pray that I was taken care of, and you got to hand that off and just go do your damn job and not be afraid and just trust in the fate of everything. So that's kind of where the angel wings come in.

Well, I think that people that do inherently risky things oftentimes look for signs or look for some direction, some message from the universe. And that's why I was.

Well, I mean, I feel like as a race car driver, I've thought about this a lot lately, and I wonder how much of our job is a little less even just feeling what's happening and how much is actually maybe more intuitive. Like, maybe we're having more intuitive understanding of what's going on and what's coming than we realize everything's happening so fast. And that you just think, oh, I have really good feel. I mean, I'm sure there's some of that, too. So I think that Maybe athletes or people at an elite level are more in touch with that intuitive side, that finite last thread of feel. Maybe it's beyond feel knowing that makes sense.

I mean, if you think about the amount of time that you've spent involved in that intense activity, in this, they say that people get road rage for. One of the reasons why people get road rage is because when you're driving, you are reacting to things that could happen instantaneously, very quickly. So your body is at a very heightened state, and people. Someone cuts you off, they start freaking out, like, instantly. They go from one to ten right away. And the reason is because they're always at seven, and they don't even realize they're at seven. When you're in the car, you're probably at, like, 13.

This one goes to eleven.

Yeah, I mean, you're cranked up. Right. And so you're probably seeing things and feeling things that the average person, they don't experience in their life.

100%. Yeah. You're just working at that top level of feeling, of focus. Is that what you call in the zone where it kind of almost becomes slightly out of body? You don't even know how it's happening. It's just happening.

Well, I would imagine, like, you kind of melt away, and you're just completely involved.

Well, when I think about what I have to do, like, let's say as an example, coming in for a pit stop, and you got your throttle, brake, clutch, gears, all the different things that you have to do to think about it logically. What you have to do is