Danica Patrick Raises Eyebrows With Her Donald Trump Comparison

Danica Patrick, to this DAY, is still one of the most polarizing figures in NASCAR history. Hell, maybe racing history. 

That's not me being hyperbolic, by the way. I write a couple Danica Patrick stories every quarter, and they are, by far, the biggest drivers of traffic in terms of engagement. Last week, we had a story about Danica leaving the Sky Sports F1 broadcast team this upcoming season. 

It had more than 4,000 comments on Facebook. Four-thousand!

Anyway, my point is, Danica's been retired for a decade, but she hasn't lost her fastball. So, when she sits down for a podcast and compares herself to Donald J. Trump, it's gonna raise some eyebrows. 

And that's exactly what she did this past week on Dr. Gabrielle Lyon's show. 

"I think complacency doesn’t lead to nearly as much success. I think really successful people have an edge," she said when asked about the fear of failure and the drive to win. "Like, they’re not satisfied, and they don’t want to lose. 

"I mean, you know, you look at even like our president right now and some of the things that he’ll say on stage based on like, ‘I don’t want them to win.’ 

"Like, this is the president – he’s won as high as you can get."

(Clip starts at the 7:30 mark):

Danica Patrick and Trump are the same in this way

Danica, of course, never won at the NASCAR Cup Series level. She came close a few times. She started on a pole at Daytona and the world went nuts. 

But, she never won. In fact, she struggled for the longest time, and the fans never really took to her. As someone who covered her towards the end of her career, and now writes about her all the time, I can promise you that folks like her way more now than they EVER did while she was racing. 

Obviously, campaigning for Donald Trump for most of 2024 didn't hurt. Everybody knows Danica's story by now. She got introduced to politics at the end of 2023 at a Charlie Kirk Turning Point event, and has often talked about that being her "red pill moment." 

Fast-forward to 2024, and she joined Trump on the trail for much of the fall, eventually helping him retake the presidency. Over the last 12 months, she's made several different appearances at the White House and on Capitol Hill.  

"I don’t think that you have to be great at losing. I think you just have to know how to not give up," she continued. "Like, I wasn’t a great loser. My biggest fear was failing, right?

"But I don’t think being a good loser, like as in accepting it, is necessarily exactly the narrative. I think it’s a matter of being completely unsatisfied. And there are two different kinds of fueling, right? 

"There’s the fueling, because you’re more afraid to lose, and then there’s the fuel of, like, the love of the win."

And that, she said, is what ultimately drew her to Trump.