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10 Things You Didn’t Know About Danica Patrick
We may associate the world of motor racing with ego driven men fuelled by plenty of testosterone. We are not used to seeing beautiful, five-foot-two ladies don the racing jumpsuit and race around the track. However, that is exactly what American, Danica Patrick has done. She has revolutionized women’s racing and given inspiration to many youngsters who may have thought the sport was too male dominated to contemplate. Danica regularly tries to inspire young people to follow their dreams and believe that they can achieve whatever they want in life. Her approach to life, her healthy eating, and her drive to achieve surely provide a splendid role model for young women everywhere.
10. She wants to write a cookbook
Danica is well known for her passion for healthy food and eating the best foods for optimum health. She believes in eating fresh foods particularly those that were made by the sun. she believes that the healthiest foods for her are those that the sun shone on, rather than something in a packet. She loves to cook at home and to create her own healthy recipes. However, when she visited a school in Arizona, she revealed that she has a secret desire to write her own cookery book. Now that she is retired, perhaps this could become a reality for the ex-racing driver.
She often posts pictures of her cooking on her social media page and is proud of how well she has progressed and dismayed when she creates something that isn’t up to scratch. She believes that her racing career might have caused her to ignore her creative side and this is something she wants to cultivate, according to USA Today. She said that her dreams have changed as the years have gone by and that she loves to build and create and that her future may lead her down this path.
9. She has a fridge full of vegetables, cheese and Coca-Cola
Danica loves to eat healthily and often fills fans in on her meals, such as breakfasts of chia seeds and almond milk with lots of fruit. She and boyfriend, Aaron … love fruit topped waffles for Sunday breakfast. She fills up on sweet potatoes, lean meat and kale, and makes smoothies to give her extra energy. She keeps plenty of fresh spinach in her fridge to add to her smoothies. However, Danica shared the contents of her fridge and it revealed the expected profusion of healthy vegetables and cheese along with full fat Coca-Cola, in contrast to the rest of her sugar limited diet, revealed Delish… There even seems to be a bottle of wine nestling in a bottom drawer!
Her diet consists of plenty of fresh ingredients, be that fish, eggs, fruit or vegetables. Danica is a creative cook and will mix the sweet with the savory. One picture that Danica shared was of two waffles topped with steak and egg and another topped with cashew butter, banana, and chocolate chips. Evidently, with the majority of Danica’s diet being so uber healthy, she feels no guilt about indulging in a bit of chocolate or the odd Coca-Cola.
8. She loves her family to be around her
Danica may be a successful driver with the courage to take on a circuit, but she is a family girl at heart. Danica is close to her parents and keeps them close during her working days as well. Her father, TJ, manages Danica’s merchandise trailer and her website and drives her coach. Her mother, Bev, manages all her daughter’s business and this allows Danica to focus on the business at hand, racing or whatever other venture she is involved with at the time.
Her parents are fully supportive of her career and understand it well. Indeed, her father raced midget cars, motocross and snowmobile and her mother was a snowmobile mechanic. This makes both her parents’ ideal sounding boards for Danica to bounce ideas off. Not only do they have their daughter’s best interests at heart, but they have the experience in racing and the makeup of cars to advise her sensibly. TJ and Bev encouraged Danica from an early age. They bought her her very first ko-kart and supported her move to England to learn the skill of racing. Danica broke the track record at Sugar Hill Race Track on her first outing on the ko-kart at the age of ten!
7. She’s a music buff
Danica loves her music and is a massive Alanis Morrisette fan. She will listen to music during her extensive workout sessions and Alanis is a firm favorite. Danica gets fired up for her workout sessions with plenty of music and has not only been a fan but starred in music videos during her career. The first video Danica starred in was for rapper Jay Z. She featured in character, as a driver in the video for ‘Show Me What You Got’ with another racing superstar, Dale Earnhardt Jr. the couple zip around the streets of Monaco, home of a famous Formula One Grand Prix race.
In a three-sixty turn musically, Danica starred in a country music video for Miranda Lambert’s song, ‘Fastest Girl in Town’. Danica was evidently a natural choice to represent the title of the song. The girls commit a crime in the video and Danica drives the getaway car! In another country music video, Danica featured with her now ex-boyfriend, Ricky Stenhouse. The pair featured in Colt Ford’s video for ‘Drivin’ Around Song’. Danica’s model-like beauty and finesse behind the wheel seem to make her a natural choice for artists who want a driver in a music video!
6. She has definite tastes in food
We know Danica is a foodie and is fanatically interested in what she eats. However, she does have some very definite ideas about what she does and doesn’t like. For instance, she is completely opposed to popsicles and absolutely hates them. Whether it’s the cold or the sweetness is not completely clear, but she detests the sweet treats. Another food quirk that Danica has involves a fairly basic staple of most diets: mashed potato. Not for Danica the usual run of the mill potato, butter and cream, she adds a special ingredient which elevates it from the normal dish to something a bit special. Danica likes to add the super expensive ingredient, truffle oil to her mashed potato, giving it an earthy taste that Danica loves.
While Danica is known for her healthy lifestyle and eating, she does have a weakness for wine. Not only does she enjoy the odd glass with her supper, she has installed a wine cellar in her home in Pheonix. This goes against the grain of the traditional image of a sportsman who might traditionally drink beer, hence the number of beer sponsorship in the sports industry, but Danica prefers something a little more refined.
5. She’s a multi-millionaire from numerous businesses
Everyone would expect Danica to have made a fortune from her success on the race track, but this is only a fraction of her earning capacity. Danica has evidently had sound business advice from her parents and has diversified in her career, knowing that her shelf life as a sports person would always be limited. Danica’s net worth is over $60 million thanks to various business ventures. Danica has recently launched a range of clothes under the label, Warrior, according to The Sportster. She has also had a successful career as an author, writing an autobiography and a health and lifestyle guidance book.
Danica is a wine buff and has entered into the field of winemaking to add to her portfolio. A major part of her earnings comes from sponsorship and advertising, most notably for GoDaddy. Her status as a female success story in a world that is traditionally dominated by men and being gorgeous into the bargain means that Danica is a big draw for advertisers. Danica has also appeared in commercials for Secret deodorant and Honda cars. Add to this Danica’s modeling career which nets her a huge amount of money, and her appearance in music videos and it is clear how her net worth is so high.
4. She loves football
Most sportsmen and women are fans of other sports, and for Danica her love is football. She was born in Wisconsin, so fans may expect her to be a Green Bay Packers fan but in fact, Danica is a fan of Illinois based Chicago Bears. She loves to go and cheer on her favorite team and regularly attends matches. She is extremely knowledgeable about the game and enjoys nothing more than a good conversation about the game.
Her allegiance to the Bears makes her personal life a little more complicated as Danica dates Aaron Rodgers who plays for the Green Bay Packers! Danica has said that one of her favorite things about the NFL quarterback is that he is so good at football! The couple originally met back in 2012 while Danica was dating her previous boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse. They exchanged email addresses at that time and stayed in touch during the intervening years. Football is close to both their hearts and evidently, this has spilled over into their relationship. Their nicknames for each other are Green Bay and Chicago! According to Hollywoodlife. Despite this rivalry, Rodgers is supremely supportive of his girlfriend’s career and was there to wish her well for her last NASCAR race.
3. She’s a TV star
Danica is no stranger to being on tv and in front of the cameras, it is part of her job. However, Danica has not limited her tv appearances to the racing track. She has actually worked as a tv host for Spike tv including Powerblock. To promote her love of racing she also appeared in a documentary called Girl Racers. In 2007 she also appeared in an episode of Diggnation, taking the hosts round an Indy Car track. As a guest, she has been interviewed on the Late Show with David Letterman and also on the Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2008.
She has been filmed for numerous commercials, given that she is such a big draw for advertisers. One commercial involved a bit of acting when she appeared in a ‘This is SportsCenter’ commercial and her Indy car was towed for being parked in the wrong space. Danica appears in training and motivational videos as well including TEAMWORK and Four Weeks in May. Recently it was announced that Danica was set to host the EPSYS, making her the first woman ever to do so. She was announced as the host of the ESPN held in Los Angeles in July 2018 according to ESPN..
2. She has received speeding tickets
Danica has to be able to drive fast to do her job. Her speed is the essence of what helps her to win races. However, off the track, Danica has been known to drive fast too. In 2007 she received a ticket in her hometown of Scottsdale in Arizona, according to Stockcarracing.wikia.com. The second came a year later. Danica’s punishments for the misdemeanors were attendance at traffic school and a $196 fine respectively. In both incidences, she was traveling at over fifty miles per hour in zones that recommended forty and thirty-five miles per hour.
Danica may have been put off her off track speeding by her punishments and days in court, but more importantly, it is a black mark on her image and is not what advertisers want to see in their stars. Danica has long been a role model for young girls wanting to achieve their dreams and making it in a male-dominated world, and this behavior is hardly what young girls should be aspiring to. Hopefully, Danica learned her lesson and will confine her speedy antics to the race track where speed is encouraged.
1. She’s a multi-record breaker
Danica can list many firsts and bests in her career thus far. From an early age she was setting records, at the age of ten, she was producing track records for go-karting. However, on the race track, it is in a car that Danica has really cleared the board. She was the first woman to lead laps and to achieve a finish in the top five at an Indianapolis 500, in 2005. She pioneered women’s sport by becoming the first woman to win a major league open-wheel race in a North American series. Not only that she is the first woman to win a NASCAR Cup Series pole, securing the fastest qualifying lap. She finished in eighth place at the Daytona 500 in 2013, which was the highest result for a woman to date in that race.
In short, she is the most successful woman racer in Indy Car and NASCAR, according to The Daily Mail. She has achieved the accolade of being the first female Indy Car series winner and in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, she is the first woman to gain pole position. Whatever her achievements in the future, Patrick will always be a trailblazer for women racing drivers.