Whereas Sarah Fisher is the fresh faced, clean living girl next door racer of the IndyCar Series, Danica Patrick continues to earn the reputation as the IndyCar Series’ bad girl. Where Fisher is most often pictured with helmet in hand, meeting with politicians or signing autographs for young fans, Danica is more often photographed in tight or almost no clothes and sexy poses.
When Ryan Briscoe made contact with Patrick during the Indy 500, Patrick jumped out of her disabled car and slowly, steadily made her way down the pit road on way to Briscoe's pit stall, with a horrified PR gal shadowing her, coaxing her back. When Marco Andretti overdrove, basically causing Tony Kanaan to spin into Fisher...Fisher wept. Patrick takes pride in not crying. But then Patrick has only to get in the car and drive, Fisher has to put not only her sweat and tears in her ride, but her money.
While Fisher has settled into the role of good girl...does Danica want to be the bad girl of the Indy Car Series?
Patrick said, “I don't think that it's ever a route that you choose to be the bad guy. I think that in an ideal world I would win over everyone's heart and be a sweetheart and be tough on the track and have great finishes, that would be ideal and that people would like me from that standpoint.
But, unfortunately, when you're popular, you get, again, positive and negative attention. There's just no-- I have no control over that.”
And there is no doubt that she is popular. She has been photographed in driver suits for racing magazines and bikinis for Sports Illustrated. She has been in numerous other magazines and TV shows from Playboy to the Late Show.
She is confidently comfortable in her own skin and just maybe she is comfortable not only with being the sexiest woman racing, but with being the Bad Girl.
A visit to her website and you are greeted with the music of Saving Jane….almost as if Patrick is taunting the other drivers with the lyrics, “ I’m’ the life of the party all the boys want to catch me… I'm the perfect disaster, you can't stop me, coming faster and faster but you just watch me,,,,”
Fisher’s website is quieter, with a picture of her in her helmet.
Two women drivers, both voted most popular, but two very different people.
IndyCar needed and continues to need the wholesome hardworking Fisher and IndyCar also needs someone just like Patrick. They are the day and the night and the calm and the storm, the Yen and the Yang and together they make the IndyCar Series a lot more entertaining to watch.
