Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Date: Friday May 12, 2017
Event: Go Bowling 400(Media Availability)
Series: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Kansas Speedway (1.5-mile oval)
Danica Patrick visited the media center at Kansas Speedway Friday afternoon to discuss the days two practice sessions, upcoming qualifying and her unique paint scheme for the Saturday night race. Below is a transcript of race-related questions.
DANICA PATRICK (No. 10 Wonder Woman/One Cure Ford Fusion) — CAN YOU TALK TO US ABOUT YOUR PAINT SCHEME THIS WEEKEND? “Well, it is Wonder Woman and it means that the movie is coming out June 2nd. That is what it means. And it makes sense because I am a girl. I was reading the hero card and it talked about Wonder Woman being a warrior, so that makes sense. Oddly enough, I looked at the picture on the hood and it kinda does look like me. The Wonder Woman logo actually looks like my Warrior logo, so I think it was meant to be. It is really neat to drive paint schemes that draw cool attention, especially from kids. I think there are probably a lot of little girls that will like this paint scheme and what it means. Also One Cure being on the car to follow another passion of mine which is animals. Their research that they do for animals having such an effect on humans as well and seeing that the cancer treatments for animals are the same as people. That is why is is One Cure for all. Lots of cool stuff on the car.”
FROM LOOKING AT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FEED, DOGS ARE CLEARLY IMPORTANT TO YOU. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE ONE CURE ON THE CAR AND BE ABLE TO SUPPORT SUCH A GREAT CAUSE? “I think that for any of you that have animals, you think that your pet is going to live to hopefully somewhere over 10 years old. I hope for about 20 or so. The way that I take care of them and what I feed them, I go all the way and do everything I possibly can. If these dogs don’t live to 16 or 18 I am probably not going to cook their food for them the next batch of dogs I get. You have to do everything you can to keep them alive. One of the things that enters my mind when you hope your dog lives to a certain age is that you never know what is going to happen. They could be five and get cancer. That happens. I would do anything possible to keep them alive. To me it is great that there is so much research going on. Just knowing that just like any problem that comes about, any kind of cancer or anything like that, it is so sad and so sudden and something that we are all trying to find a cure for. It is great work that One Cure is doing. It kind of sounds like cancer is cancer. I remember asking doctors many years ago. I was with a bunch of doctors and one of my good friends has a son who is fine now but he had cancer really young and I asked the doctors, he was on chemo for a year and was that because his dosage was so low he had to stay on it longer. They said no, kids take the same dosage adults do and sometimes handle it better. The fact that cancer is cancer is cancer across the board is a positive in trying to figure out how to cure it, treat it and get rid of it. That is something that I think we can all relate to across all fronts, whether they are your furry little friend — well I suppose you could probably have a human that is a furry little friend too.”
YOUR BOYFRIEND GOT THE WIN LAST WEEK AND YOU ARE STILL LOOKING FOR YOURS. DID HE HAVE BRAGGING RIGHTS THIS WEEK? DID HE RUB IT IN AT ALL? “We absolutely never mess with each other when it comes to that stuff. I think it is obviously because it means so much to us that it is a pretty crappy thing to do. Would you mess with your wife or girlfriend? I mean when it comes to golf or something I will totally mess with him but when it comes to something like this, no. We don’t talk about that at all. I was just simply happy for him and my weekend sucked yet again. Actually my weekend didn’t really suck. I had a fine race going on it just ended early so I had another terrible result which has been the case so far this year. But if I was going to have one race where I didn’t get to get all the way to the finish line and either finish the race, have a good finish or win, I am really glad I had the chance to watch him win. I think that was pretty cool and that I was ready to go. All I did was throw my tennis shoes on and got out the door on the golf cart and went to victory lane and waited for him to pull in. That was a gift of an experience to be able to have in our relationship because most of the time I would be dealing with my team and dealing with whatever I had going on. I had that chance to regroup. I was fresh as a daisy. I had showered and spend the afternoon standing around celebrating with him. It was a great day. But we don’t talk about that stuff.”
YOU HAD A TERRIFIC RUN HERE IN 2014, DO YOU ENJOY RACING HERE? DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE A CAR CAPABLE OF A SOLID RUN TOMORROW NIGHT? “I am not gonna lie. I don’t know. We had some good runs and some not good runs. I would say in general I don’t feel all that comfortable but I just left our team debrief – a little early to come over here – and we all were talking about being somewhat uncomfortable and we used the term “puckering up” in the corner to describe how things felt out there. It is so fast and the tires so hard that the grip drops off so quick when you go past it. It makes it a lot of work out there. Very edgy. I don’t think it is too much different for anyone but that is how it feels. I had a couple good runs and a couple bad runs. We will have to see. I didn’t like how it drove in traffic all that much so for me I think that is what I am focused on, how we fix the way it felt in traffic because that will be the case all night tomorrow night, traffic everywhere. You have to be able to move around. I don’t know if we will be as fast as I was a couple years ago here when I ran top-10 all night and got to 3rd at one point. That was kind of a breakthrough race for me. Hopefully that is the case. Effort level never changes for sure. We will do what we can and hopefully it pays off and hard work is rewarded.”
Is there any Danica Patrick Wonder Woman hero card left? If so how can I get 1?