“I missed it” - When Danica Patrick opened up on her Indy 500 nostalgia after her NASCAR switch

The former motorsports racer, Danica Patrick, is an extremely influential figure in women's racing. Her last outing on the race track came in 2018 at the Indianapolis 500. While she was saying adieu, back then she reminisced about missing IndyCar following her switch to NASCAR in 2012.

Danica Patrick became the first woman to win a race in the highest class of open-wheel racing in America when she triumphed in the 2008 Indy Japan 300. By 2012, her interests started to switch to NASCAR, and she thus, spent seven years in the sport, with her last outing being the 2018 Daytona 500 in the Cup Series.

However, in 2018, Patrick admitted that she missed racing in the Indianapolis 500 during her seven-year hiatus from IndyCar.

"I remember watching the Indy 500 the first year I wasn’t in it and I missed it. I remember that feeling. As time wore on I missed that relevancy of being in the game where people would ask before the race, ‘Who do you think is going to win today? My name did not pop up in NASCAR," Danica Patrick said via Autoweek.

Danica Patrick's last Indy 500 outing before the one in 2018, came in the 2011 season of IndyCar.

Danica Patrick admitted to not feeling 'relevant' in NASCAR

While Danica Patrick admitted to missing racing in the Indianapolis 500 during her seven-year hiatus, in 2018, she also talked about her NASCAR stint. The 42-year-old felt that she was not able to make her mark in American stock car racing.

In light of this, Patrick had the following to add:

"That first Daytona 500 when I was on the pole, other than that, most of the races weren’t like that. I missed being relevant. I’m going to try to achieve that this month. It’s going to be hard. The car feels like it has some good natural speed. Build confidence, don’t break it, and come back in a couple of weeks and see where we go."

In her overall career in NASCAR, Patrick made a total of 252 appearances. 191 of these outings came in the Cup Series whereas 61 of them came in the Xfinity Series. Moreover, in the process of doing so, she was able to amass seven top-tens and one pole position in each category.

Following the end of her racing career, Danica Patrick has successfully transitioned into an esteemed motorsport pundit. In recent years, she has often been spotted giving astute analysis on motorsports like NASCAR, IndyCar, and also Formula 1. The 2025 season of the latter two is slated to start in March and considering this, she could again be seen in the pit lane sharing her knowledge of motorsports.