Danica

You don’t have to be a racing fan to know her name. But now that she’s retired, she’s facing the same question that puzzles every entrepreneur: How do you leave something you’re great at and start over?

- Aaron Gell

In the weeks leading up to Danica Patrick’s final IndyCar race this past May, she spent her time the way most drivers do—practicing on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and running through details with her team. But with about two weeks to go before she’d suit up professionally for the last time, she is summoned to do a little salesmanship. A group of teenage girls has been assembled at the speedway’s main building, and NASCAR has asked Patrick to give them a pep talk about the exciting possibilities of a career in professional auto racing.

Who better for the job? Almost nobody, really. Patrick is one of the few women to find success in motorsports, a pursuit—and a business—long dominated by men. From her spectacular run in open wheel racing, where she became the first, and still only, woman to win an IndyCar Series race, to her transition to stock-car racing, to her recurring pit stops to star in a run of head-turning Super Bowl ads for internet services powerhouse GoDaddy, Patrick has been one of the most recognizable figures in racing for the past 13 years.

And yet, as she stands now at the front of a conference room, looking out at this gathering of hopeful adolescent faces, Patrick can’t help veering off script. “Find something you actually frickin’ like to do!” she advises the junior high schoolers, who giggle in response. Maybe that’s auto racing, but maybe—probably—it isn’t. “Be honest with yourself about ‘I hate this job, I’m miserable.’… Find something you love.” A minute later, she was gone, speed walking back to the garage trailed by a cargo-shorted throng of autograph hounds, to practice the sport it turns out she doesn’t frickin’ like to do anymore, and maybe never did.