Visit to Boys & Girls Club comes with red tutu
Editor's note: Photos via Jessica Christian, MLive
ADRIAN, Mich. -- She played air hockey and helped build paper race cars, mixing and mingling with youngsters while wearing jeans, a black T-shirt and a red tutu.
"That's part of the fun … you can be silly," NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Danica Patrick said of her outfit. "It also just helps the kids feel relaxed. If I'm willing to be silly, then they can be silly and we don't need to be serious, we can just have a good time."
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver will compete in this Sunday's Quicken Loans 400 at Michigan International Speedway (1 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, MRN, SiriusXM), stop No. 15 of 36 on this year's schedule. But on Thursday, Patrick spent the afternoon at the Boys & Girls Club of Lenawee. Along with Alba Colon, General Motors' program manager for its NASCAR Sprint Cup Series effort, the pair entertained and informed approximately 200 kids taking part in the after-school program.
"I've done lots of Boys & Girls Club appearances. They're easy, they're all about having fun," she said. "It's all about kids that want to be and can be inspired. The time always goes really quickly with them, and you kind of feel like you're really making an impact."
Some recognized her, some didn't. Nearly all seemed impressed.
"She's that famous race car driver," her air hockey opponent said. As for her skills at the table? "Yeah, she's really good," he admitted.
"My grandpa is a big fan," another youngster offered. "I can't remember his favorite driver. He drives that Mountain Dew car."
"Dale (Earnhardt) Jr.," Patrick said.
"Yeah, that's him," came the reply.
The 90-minute session passed quickly as kids of various ages each got a chance to spend time with the driver.
"I know what it was like to watch TV and see someone on there and think 'What are they like in person?' or 'How did they get there?,' " Patrick said. "So it's neat to be able to come to a Boys & Girls Club where it's a different experience for them to meet someone that’s on TV. Just have them see that they're just like them except that I had something that I really enjoyed doing. I just decided when I was 10 that I wanted to be a race car driver … you've got to have that dream. If you don't have a goal, how are you going to reach it?"
• Patrick enters this weekend's event 20th in the points standings with a best finish of seventh (at Martinsville) this season. She was running just outside the top 10 during the second half of last week's race at Pocono Raceway when she tagged the wall and ended up finishing 37th.
"It was definitely a heartbreaker," she said. "But those are the things that you just can't do if you want to be in a position to be in the top 16, you can't make mistakes. Especially for me, it's not like I run top five or 10 every weekend and you just have bad ones and it'll all balance out. It's like I need every point I can get to hope for that.
"It's part of the learning experience, too; with these stock cars you really have to push to the edge to be competitive, but pushing over the edge gets you in big trouble. I used to do it a lot more when I first started in NASCAR and it has gone down. But you sure find that when you're trying to get that last little bit … and you're doing really well that you sometimes go over that edge. Those are just mistakes that I need to avoid."
Patrick will be making her fifth Sprint Cup start at MIS. She finished 17th here last June and 18th when the series returned in August.