Tragic Details About Danica Patrick

Danica Patrick has a long list of achievements on the racetrack, including being the first (and, as of 2024, only) female driver to ever win an IndyCar race. However, there’s a lot that people don’t know about Patrick.

Despite an impressive decades-long pro driving career, which ran from 2005 to 2018, Patrick hasn’t exactly received universal support. Indeed, some fans simply can’t stand her and even those who once cheered her on found it difficult to keep doing so following repeated instances in which Patrick made tone-deaf remarks. Like the time she appeared to proclaim women should be hesitant to pursue professional racing because it’s more of a man’s sport. Not to mention her bizarre comments about lizard people, which left many feeling worried about the former pro driver.

Patrick has become a divisive figure, to say the least, and while some of her proclamations can’t be defended, it must be noted that she hasn’t always had it easy. Despite portraying herself as a strong and confident athlete, she’s struggled with mental health and experienced various challenges in both her personal life and professional life.

Danica Patrick’s love of racing started when she received a go-kart from her parents at just 10 years old. The career that followed had a number of impressive highs, including in 2008 when Patrick won the Indy Japan 300, becoming the first-ever woman to finish first in an IndyCar race (a title she still held as of 2024).

However, there were also plenty of downs, including her 2005 IndyCar debut in Homestead, Florida at the Toyota Indy 300. Reminiscing about her time on the track on “The Adversity Advantage Podcast” in 2024, Patrick revealed that her first race was also one of the scariest. She was about three-fourths of the way through when, suddenly, “A car came down and clipped my right rear and I shot up into the wall, and slid down the track.”

Her car caught fire, and next thing Patrick remembers, she woke up in the on-track medical center. “[I’m] looking up to a bright light and then I see a priest come over my head,” she told host Doug Bopst. Her mom was on-hand as well and tried to reassure her daughter by downplaying the accident, but in reality, “I had to go to the hospital in an ambulance,” Patrick shared.

In October 2011, Danica Patrick raced around the track in what was to be her final appearance as a full-time IndyCar driver. It was the Las Vegas Indy 300 and her goal was to finish her stint at the top by winning the race; She was the fastest in practice and it seemed promising. However, the event turned tragic as a 15-car pileup killed a fellow driver, 33-year-old Dan Wheldon.

It was the 11th lap, and as cars rammed into each other, some flipped through the air, others caught fire, and debris riddled the track. Describing the crash, Patrick told the media, per The Hollywood Reporter, “It was like a movie scene which they try to make as gnarly as possible.” Despite it being a sport riddled with safety concerns, the drivers were shocked and devastated. In a since-deleted tweet, Patrick told followers (via Reuters), “There are no words for today. Myself and so many others are devastated. I pray for Susie [Wheldon] and the kids that God will give them strength.”

Years later, that crash is still something she thinks about, not least because she was almost a part of it. Speaking with the “Jocko Podcast” in 2023, Patrick revealed how miraculous it was that she herself missed the pileup. “I was almost part of it,” she recalled. “The car in front of me was caught up in it, he spun off and crashed, [and] almost everyone behind me did too.”

Following the 2011 IndyCar season, Danica Patrick decided to shift her focus to stock car racing as she joined NASCAR. Once again, she set new records, but in 2016, she was physically and mentally shaken following a terrifying crash at the Talladega Superspeedway.

It was close to the final lap when Patrick was hit from behind, causing her to lose control and hit the car in front of her before spinning and slamming into the backstretch wall. Fans watched as her vehicle burst into flames before she was able to get out and make it to a nearby ambulance. Patrick reckoned the car was going near full speed as the accident occurred, saying, per The New York Times, “My head feels like I hit a wall at 200.”

However, for Patrick, one of the scariest aspects of the crash was the flames. “There was fire inside the car –- it kind of knocked the breath out of me a little bit,” Patrick recounted, per USA Today. It was the first time she had witnessed a fire inside her ride, and she quickly envisioned a worst-case scenario. “I have a lot of hair, and I don’t want to lose it,” she told reporters. Thankfully, x-rays showed no serious injuries, but Patrick said her chest hurt while breathing and that her arm and foot were severely bruised.

While Danica Patrick built an entire career out of racing, she made a surprise revelation in 2018 when she expressed on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that she doesn’t actually love the sport the way people assume she does. Speaking about her decision to retire that year, Patrick said she was stepping away from driving because it was taking a toll on her mental health and overall happiness.

“I like racing, but there’s a lot of things I don’t really like about it, too,” she admitted. “If you were to ask me what I do outside of racing in my personal life, I don’t go to the racetrack, I don’t really watch races.”

The pro driver went on to tell host Joe Rogan that while racing did take its toll on her physical health, that wasn’t the reason she was ready to give it up. Rather, she could no longer deal with a mounting sense of negativity and the reality that getting out on the track no longer brought her joy. What’s more, she explained that the pressure of constantly being around so many people had become too much. “Racing in general, most of the time, it’s miserable,” she mused. “It just kind of feels like a grind a little bit.”

It was late 2017 when Danica Patrick decided she was ready to retire and announced her plans to leave the pro racing circuit with a bang. Rather than simply retiring on the spot, she vowed to return for two major races in 2018, so that she could end her career with the “Danica Double,” driving in both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500.

Unfortunately, her lofty ambitions didn’t pan out the way she wanted them to. First up was the Daytona 500, in which Patrick crashed and finished in 35th place. Then came the Indianapolis 500 -– her last ever race -– and sadly, that didn’t go much better. Yet again, Patrick crashed out of the competition, this time finishing in 30th place.

Speaking with reporters after the Indy 500, she assured them she was grateful for the opportunity to compete in both races, but admitted she felt disappointed about wrapping up her career on such a low note. “It was definitely not a great ending,” she conceded to ESPN. “I wouldn’t want it to end any year like that, but of course it being the last one, it makes it a lot worse.”

In 2014, Danica Patrick decided she wanted to boost her confidence and alter her look with breast implants. Initially, the surgery was a success, but as she told People, she soon began experiencing mounting complications. Just a year after going under the knife, the implants hardened, and Patrick became so self-conscious that she would avoid hugging people tightly for fear they would feel them.

Then, in early 2018, the situation became scarier as the pro racer started experiencing more mystery symptoms. “My hair wasn’t quite as healthy,” she told Fox News. “I had gained a few pounds and I didn’t know why.” With time, that list of unexplained medical concerns grew to include fatigue and heavy metal toxicity, but she didn’t seek help until 2021. “It was really losing my [menstrual] cycle for a couple of months that got me to go to the doctor and have my hormones checked,” she recalled.

Doctors discovered her thyroid hormone levels were low, but were no closer to finding the reason until 2022 when Patrick learned of breast implant illness. Her symptoms finally made sense and she had her implants removed that same year. However, her recovery was far from over. As she explained to People, she was planning on taking a year or two to fully heal, thus “allowing my body and my mind to really reach a place of health and balance and recovery from how much time my body spent fighting for me.”

Danica Patrick has always done an incredible job of keeping her private life under wraps, but in November 2012, she took to Facebook to publicly announce her divorce from Paul Hospenthal. “This isn’t easy for either of us, but mutually it has come to this,” Patrick wrote in the since-deleted post (via SI).

The pro racer initially met Hospenthal — who was 17 years her senior — in 2002 when he was the physical therapist assigned to help her recuperate from a hip injury. They married in 2005, but in January 2013, she officially filed for divorce, claiming in court documents (via ESPN), “My marriage is irretrievably broken and there is no reasonable prospect of reconciliation.” Following her initial announcement, Patrick was repeatedly asked about the split by reporters, but she refused to go into detail, only telling SB Nation, “It’s tough.”

She’s since moved on, dating and later splitting from NFL star Aaron Rodgers and others, but as she told Fox News in 2022, her love life has been far from picture-perfect. She especially disliked the fact that she was single as she turned 40 that year. “To sort of step into my next decade alone was like, wow, okay, that kid ship might be sailing,” she confided. “There were some of those feelings of sadness in a way.”