Drive with professional racer Danica Patrick

0:01Tenacity, grit, drive. These are essential characteristics if you want to make it in any industry, in any category. But what does it take to be the only female driver on the track in American motorsport? That is Danica Patrick. When she drove, she was the only woman competing in such a male-dominated sport. But what happens when someone like that leaves the track, leaves the competition? Where does all that tenacity and grit get channeled? More interestingly, what happens to your self-worth? This is a bit of optimism. You have this drive that is quite inspiring. You just want to do things and accomplish things.

0:56Do you know where it comes from? what I really like to do is I like to try things that are scary or hard I want to do them I'd like to do things to make sure that I can like I just I just want to make sure that I can if I need to be challenged and pushed really hard to the edge I like to push myself in that way I would say I like get a goal and I'm goal driven yeah but I'm quite process inspired so like along the way it's actually the process that I'm enjoying. So the reason why I stopped racing was because every year I felt like there was an opportunity to do better, finish higher, have more success.

1:35And when I didn't feel like that was a potential anymore, I was like, I'm done. Because that was what I loved. I loved the journey part. I loved setting a goal and accomplishing it. Yeah. Well, let's get into that. You are a role model for a lot of women because you were pretty much the only woman, not pretty much, you were the only woman in a man's sport. You raced Indy cars and then later NASCARs. And it wasn't like there was a women's league. Because driving is interesting, right? Because the reason we tend to have men and women divisions, I mean, like, if you're a marathoner, there's the women's first and there's the men's first, right?

2:09You know, like, there's different medals. Yeah. It's because of the biological differences. Totally. I mean, And I mean, that is the reason. But in driving, anyone can drive the car and may the best driver win. Right. And so I understand why it should work. So number one, and you've said some controversial things here. You've got a bit of flack for this, which is why aren't there more women driving cars against men? And any NASCAR, Indy, F1, stock car, pick a category. There are no women. You're it. Pretty much, yeah. You're it. There's not a lot of them. Why not? I really think that there's just, there's like a killer instinct that I have in me that I don't think is super common.

2:55And it's like you have to be able to get into these really competitive, aggressive, contentious environments. And you have to have the confidence to go for it. You can't get scared. And there's been girls that have been fast or had speed. but when it gets into the race situation it's a little bit more challenging they don't necessarily shine as much and this isn't I'm gonna we're talking in generalities here there's some girls that have done really well but I think that it's very I think it's less common I think my dad is part of it too I mean when I was a kid he pushed me pretty hard yeah so even when I was fast like be the fastest go-kart in the class like I'd be the fastest and even if I was a couple tons quicker or a half a second quicker, which these are a lot of time, he would still keep pushing.

3:44And so there was an idea that was placed in me that nothing's ever enough. And trust me, that's had its repercussions in my life. Never enough. Oh, woe is me. But it really did help me accomplish great things. So if you were a guy, your career wouldn't have stood out. Exactly. You didn't win enough. Right, totally. I mean, you won one Indy race, right? That's right, yeah. And if you were a male racer, no one would know your name. Probably true. So you being a female in a man's sport, in a traditionally men's sport, and you've done well, but you were, like I said, how many races have you raced?

4:28A lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I raced for 27 years. You raced for 27 years and you won one. Well, one Indy car race. One Indy car race, sorry. Yeah. NASCAR. No, I didn't win a NASCAR. I qualified on the pole at the Daytona 500, but I didn't win any. I had a bunch of top tens. So walk me through that. Well, I mean, I don't doubt that I was given opportunities because of being a female. That's absolutely part of my story, and I'm grateful for it. But look, it's a double-edged sword being a girl, because if I go out and have a good race and finish fourth, they're going to talk about it, right? And so they wouldn't have otherwise.

5:02but also if I don't do well at all they'll talk about that too and if I say something or I get angry at a driver like all this stuff makes the news so there's the other side of it which is getting judged and and being questioned a lot and so you have to endure that side of it basically the point is is that everything I do is analyzed a little bit harsher and a little bit more yeah so I did have to deal with that it's it's always a balance in life like there's always just sort of a bit of duality or polarity to balance out the good with the bad. But I think that's true for women in the workplace, too.

5:37A man in the workplace whose hard driving is considered like, oh, he's impressive, where a woman who's hard driving in the business world might be considered a bitch. There are unfair double standards in the aggression or drive or ambition that someone shows at work. And I think, to your point, the spotlight is on a woman more in the workplace. And I think being the lone woman in the race, it really focuses on that double standard. But I do find it interesting that if you were a man, we probably wouldn't be sitting here talking about your racing career. Yeah. Yeah, but it comes with the other side.

6:16So what do you want young girls to learn from you as a role model? Just that they can do anything that they really want to do. Okay. That's it. It's just like, you know, I was different, but I still did it. And I think that the real, I think that one of the big reasons why I was as successful as I was is because I didn't think of myself as being different. And I think that I was able to go, my expectation levels weren't to be the best girl. My expectation levels were to be the best. And so you don't get what you want. You get what you expect. Right. And so I expected to win. So I got closer than most ever have.

6:53And I did win. You know, so that's why I think it's more of a mindset thing about not wanting to like isolate as a female. I think this is I think this is a great insight, which is I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves or other people put pressure on us that if you're going to compete, you have to win, which is incorrect. You have to compete like like it's the Teddy Roosevelt quote, you know. What is the Teddy Roosevelt quote about being in the stadium in the game? Oh, yeah. The man in the arena. The man. You're in the arena, right? In the arena. Yeah. Yeah, you're all criticizing the person, but that's the one that's putting their blood, sweat, and tears.

7:27Exactly. They're the one in the arena. People can criticize whether you've won or didn't win, but the difference is you're in the game. Yeah. And the difference is you're showing up to win. And whether you had pull or not, whether you won or not, the point is you were in the arena and you were fighting every day with all the other gladiators. And you were good enough to compete. Oh, yeah. You were good enough to be in the arena. And that's a big deal. 20, 25 gladiators in IndyCar. Exactly. And there were only 40 gladiators in NASCAR once you win. In the whole world. And so these are all people that...

8:00It's an elite, elite, elite group. Yeah, I had to kick a lot of ass to get there. Yeah. And while I didn't win as much, it's still like... That's why, you know, people along the way, you get to the very top and it's like, yeah, but they're better than 99.999 % of everyone in the world. Right. There has to still be a best and it might not be you, but you are still part of like the top, top echelon. It's like the Olympian who came in last. It's like, well, they won everything to get to the Olympics. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Like they're all champions in every other competition. And I'm having a conversation with a friend about this.

8:31That's true, because you had to win every race to get to. Oh, I won so much in go-karting. Like to get people to notice me, I won so much. To get on an F500 team, to get on an Indy 500 team. I had to do well. I had to run really well. I had to win. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to impress people. I think we forget that. It's a great point, which is we forget what it takes to get somewhere. And the mere fact that, as you said, there's only 25 drivers and 40 in NASCAR in the whole world. That's it. That's the entire sport. It's not like the pro leagues in baseball and football where there's hundreds of players all in.

9:02You know, there's 20. And even that's still admirable. And to simply be in the arena, I think we forget that. I think that's wonderful. The drive is to be in the arena, not necessarily to win. But I think without the drive to win, you don't have a chance of making it to the arena. No, I agree with that. I agree with that. Did you ever see the movie Senna? Yeah. Yeah, I did. About Ayrton Senna? Yeah. So Senna is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. It was very good. I've seen it six or seven times. I cry every time, by the way. I know exactly what's going to happen. I cry every time. What I love about Senna is even if you don't like race car driving, I think it's an important movie to watch.

9:39because what it does is it sets up these two archetypes. You have Senna, Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian race car driver who drives with the love and passion of the sport. Of course he wants to win, but he's driven by passion. And then you have Alain Prost, whose nickname is The Professor because he does everything by the numbers. And he's not driven by passion. He's driven solely for the score. He's driven solely to win. And as a result, an inconclusive, but he's been accused of playing dirty, where he might not win the race, but he can win in points, so he maybe runs other drivers off the road, so they can't win and get points.

10:18He doesn't care about how he looks to get the numbers. He doesn't care how he looks. He wants to win at any cost. Yeah, there's a lack of purity to it. And where Ayrton won because he had an absolute love for the sport, and you see play out that when there's controversy, all the other drivers side with Senna. And never side with Prost. And you start to see that one who's driven by passion, even though he may beat us and we actually are competitors with him, we want him to lose when we're on the track with him. We want to beat him. The reality is, is the person who's driven by passion is inspiring to us.

10:52And I think that's what we're talking about here, which is to do it for the love of it. Of course you're driven to win, otherwise why would you be in a sport? I mean, there's no point in being in a game or a sport if you're not driven to win. You're not playing to lose, you're playing to win. But to drive and to be in the game for the love of it allows you to have joy and excitement and thrill to simply be in the game. Well, it allows you to be inspired by the process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise, the process is nothing. Because if you're only inspired and driven by the outcome, it's just arduous.

11:26because like in the scenario with Alain and Senna, like Senna had authenticity to the love of the sport, which authenticity is the strongest energy we can put off of our bodies, is the frequency of authenticity. And that resonates with people. Yeah, and it resonates with people. Question is, why does he resonate deeper? I think we sometimes, in our modern society, I think we heroize the wrong people, right? We heroize the high performer, but we don't consider how they got there. We don't consider their morals, their ethics, their values. I think we're a little bit seduced by fame and fortune that that becomes the thing we want more than anything.

12:12But isn't it better to be a good person, you know? And I'm not saying ambition is fine. It's at what cost, I guess. How can we give a... Like, I don't want to achieve things at any cost. Like how I get somewhere and how I do things really does matter. I think that's what values are. Well, I mean some of what I didn't like at the end of my career that made me not want to be around is like what I had to do to progress or move forward or do well was be a real dick and be even more selfish. Give me a specific story that helps me understand when you had to be a dick. Like you'd have to crash people on track.

12:46You'd have to really like politic and manipulate the system to get the crew chief you wanted and position yourself within the team. There was like games. You had to play games. So you had to play games to get the equipment and get the positioning that you needed to. And then you had to go and essentially play a little unfair at times. Instead of just for the purity of like speed and what you're able to achieve with your car. It's like, no, no, how can I, you know, like it would be like, well, I'll just move you. I will just move you out of the way. And like that just wasn't ever the way that I did things.

13:21And so it felt like to me at the end that I just wasn't resonating as much with the work that I had to do to do really well. It's like weightlifting, right? The only way you can win in weightlifting is if you take steroids. Right, exactly. And there was a great documentary called Bigger, Stronger, Faster. And basically this amateur weightlifter and his brothers are both amateur weightlifters, one or two brothers, I can't remember. and his brother decides to take steroids and he doesn't. And he can't win because everybody's taking steroids. And so he goes down this path, which is it bad to take steroids?

13:50It's a really interesting documentary. Like it's against the rules, but is it actually bad for us? You know, and the results might surprise you. But the point is, is that at what point do you want to win where you have to push other cars off the road? You have to play the politics because if you don't, 100 % of the time you come in last. Well, the only person that you live with your whole life is yourself. and so even the most successful people can be very miserable and so you can think that you'll have everything you want by winning or making all the money or being the ceo or whatever the thing is but you still have to go home to yourself every single day and wake up with yourself every single morning but people don't think that way like i mean like it's become a punch line right it's like well you know how do you sleep at night and you have to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning right it's like i can tell you all the banker boys who destroyed the economy in 2008 night they slept just fine you know and it's like in the moment well I don't think anybody thinks that way I think when somebody's in it when they're in the drive and they're driven by personal ambition and fame and fortune and I want to be number one and I'm going to push people aside to do it I don't think they look at themselves in the mirror and go oh I need to change I think they might not be happy there might be sadness and stress and all those things I think they just what they do is I think they rationalize their stress and their depression I think they can And rationalized it away was like, you know, look how much money I've got or look how much fame I've got.

15:13I'm the world champion, you know. And I think when they are the world champion and when they are wealthy and when they are the leader, those rationalizations work. But when they're out of the game, when they're no longer the CEO, when they've retired from the sport, that's when the demons come. Because no one cares about you anymore. You're yesterday's news. Now. Right. Now do you want to live with yourself? Right. Well, that's the tradeoff. Ride the roller coaster, man. If that's what you want to do, you'll be really high and then you'll be really low. And I've found that in life. There's always, if you're really, really high, you better expect that there can be a really big low for that.

15:53You can be a race car driver and go have adrenaline every single weekend and then you come down off of it and you're like, I need to be busy. I'm bored. I need something. I need stimulation. Let's jump out of a helicopter. Like you ride the roller coaster, you steal from someone and you pay the penalty in some other way. Maybe it's not legally. Maybe it's not in business. Maybe it's just with your own thoughts inside of your head and the and the feelings that you have about the way that you do things. But I find that there's always a pretty reciprocal trade off with everything. It's a you know, or being famous and like, you know, there's a trade off to having fame and fortune and is that, look, people know who you are.

16:31they're going to judge what you do. And it's like, yeah, but they bought your house, they bought your boat, they bought your plane, they bought your, you know, you have to understand that your popularity is also fueling a really great aspect of your life that people don't get access to. You know, I also think that and I'm not sure how applicable this is. But, you know, we're talking about personalities and dynamics and the way people act and, and how they sleep at night and if they do. And like, I just think that life is that we're getting into more of the nature of reality, which is something I'm super fascinated by.

16:59But like, everything is here to show us us. And so if we are someone that goes and sees someone that just crashes someone out, and doesn't have a regard for like the ethics or the purity of a sport, then maybe we lack ethics and purity of the sport in our own way in our own life. And that that is going to run its course. And when you finally recognize that pattern, through who you cheer for, or what you've struggled with on your own. It's showing you you. And so I think what it says that people loved Ayrton Senna so much is that there's a lot of good people. That's why it resonated. That's why it made it.

17:42There's actually way more good people than bad people because it's showing them them. They resonate. They get it. They can meet them there and go, I love that. I do it for the love of it too. I think when we're young, we're constantly trying to prove ourselves you know Teddy Roosevelt said oh there's the second Teddy Roosevelt reference now comparison is the thief of joy oh I say that all the time you know that's so true and when we're young it's all comparison like I meet young people who I'm like why don't you take a gap year you know between high school and college they're like I can't I'm like why not they're like I'll fall behind I'm like fall behind what like what race are you in like what do you mean I can't I'm gonna be behind and by the way that was me when I was younger are as competitive against other people.

18:26And now I'm competitive against myself. And I'm a fierce competitor and I like picking arbitrary competitors. So like when I go for a jog, for example, I'll always pick someone who's in front of me and I'll be like, beat them. And I'll run past them and I'll pick somebody else's head of me. You got our brains think the same too. You know? And I just pick arbitrary people because it motivates me to push myself harder. Sure. But I'm not like running past them and like flipping them off as I'm running by. But like, you know, it's - It's part of your own personal game. It's for me. It's my little game to push myself.

18:57There are pawns in your game. But those are finite games. Yeah. They're finite games. And then when I come off the trail, I'm not like, I passed eight people. That's not what happens. It's simply to make me push myself harder. It's a finite game within the infinite, to be honest, because your infinite game is to always excel. The infinite game, no. No? The infinite game is to stay in the game. Isn't that the definition of infinite game? No, the infinite game is not necessarily to excel. Well, the infinite game is to stay in the game, right? So the infinite game, in an infinite mindset, for example, the infinite mindset requires that if you're burning yourself out, it's better to slow down and to reconfigure and get your head in place and get your body back in the game.

19:41I tell this story of, do you know the story of the two lumberjacks? No. I love this story. So there's two lumberjacks. Every day they start chopping wood at the same time, and every day they stop at the same time. and every day one of the lumberjacks disappears in the middle of the day for about an hour and every day he chops more wood than the other guy. And this goes on for months. And finally the one who works all day says, I have to ask you, every day we start at the same time. Every day we stop at the same time. Every day you disappear for about an hour in the middle of the day. Every day I work longer and harder than you and every day you chop more wood than me.

20:13Where do you go for that hour? And the other lumberjack looks up and goes, oh, I'll go home and sharpen my axe. In other words, for that hour, his performance dips. For that hour, when he leaves and he stops chopping, the other guy is going to be way ahead. But when he comes back, he's got a sharper axe and he makes up for it. And that's what the infinite mindset is. You allow for slowing. You allow for stopping. You allow for the metric to go down so that you can sharpen your axe, whether it's your mind, your body, your spirit, whatever it is, to come back stronger the next day. And I've seen this pattern repeated so many times.

20:53Rick Elias, who's been on this podcast, runs a remarkable company called Red Ventures. Rick was, remember the U.S. Airways flight that landed on Hudson? Rick was on that plane. Now, Rick was this hard-driving entrepreneur who spent, you know, I don't know, nearly 20 years of his life building a company worth a few hundred million dollars. And he thought he was the shit. He thought he was high flyer, Mr. First Class, you know who I am, you know? and then he has this near-death experience which he says was the greatest gift he could ever be given because there was no survivor's guilt because everybody survived.

21:26It was 90 seconds, he says, which was just long enough from the minute the engines cut out to the landing on the Hudson. Everybody survived. So you get to have the lessons of the near-death experience without all the horrors, right? And he reconfigures his entire way he leads. He makes it not about himself anymore. He becomes infinite-minded. It's not about winning or being the best or being first. It's about just being a better version of himself. He practices all these new things like forgiveness. And he builds, in just a few years, he builds a$6 billion company. Wow. Do you think there's always like a, there's an eternal infinite game going on?

22:05Well, I mean, that's ironic. Of course, is the answer. Right. The question is whether we're aware of it and playing it. I think too many of us, so let's take your sport, right? Let's take driving, which is the people who go into, whether they're Olympians or race car drivers, they are fundamentally driven to win. They like winning. They want to win. They push to win, sometimes unethically, but they play right to the hairline of the rules. You know? You see this, you know, I watch Drive to Survive. I watch F1. These guys are all playing to the hairline of the rules, and when one of them's clever, and finds a loophole, the rest of them freak out and say, you're cheating.

22:45It's only because they didn't figure out the loophole, right? We see that all the time. But that attitude, I think, follows them off the track, that everything they do, they're driven to win. And you hear, like, you know, whether it's gambling or whether it's relationships, you know, like it's always this win, win, win, win, win. And I wonder if they recognize that the infinite game of life has finite components, like when you're driving. Exactly. But not everything is a race. Not everything is a race. This is the one thing that I talk, when I talk to former athletes, when people are out of their, like where they struggle, is their self-worth comes from the easy metric, right?

23:26I won. I came in third. I'm in the game. I made the Olympics. I'm one of 20, 25 competitors in the whole sport. And if you've been racing since you're 10 years old and been playing the game and your whole self-worth comes from being in the arena, and you're no longer in the arena, the question is, is how do you redefine your self-worth? I mean, this is a very hard question. How do you define your self-worth? Maybe it's just by how happy and content you are. Like, what's the ratio there? Tell me a race that you were a part of or something you did in your racing career that if everything were like this one event, you may not have even done very well, right?

24:08But if everything was like this one day, this one race, this one event, you'd be the happiest person alive. Yeah, it wouldn't have been when I won. So tell me a specific case. It wouldn't have been when I won. So tell me a specific case. There's a couple, but I'll say this one. My first race at Martinsville is the one that sticks out first. It was this really hard little half-mile track, and it's known as one of the harder races of the year. And you're not relying on aerodynamics. It's like you've got to get the handling right, but then you've got to pass. then you can't put a wheel wrong because then you go offline and you lose a lot of spots.

24:41It's just a tough race. And it's really aggressive too. There's a lot of bumping and banging. And my boss at the time, Tony Stewart, was like, dang it, I can't believe I forgot to put Martinsville on your schedule last year for the 10 hardest cup races I needed to give you to prepare for the next year when you're doing it full time. And so we get to Martinsville and I'm not super fast. And then And I spin at the beginning trying to pass someone and I go to the back and I'm a lap down. And I managed to get my lap back. It's 500 laps around Martinsville. And I managed to pass Tony and I beat Tony and I finished like 11th or something like that.

25:16Like I had a great race. And I would say that that one sticks out because I earned it. Like I had adversity. Like I wasn't good and I made progress. The delta between the start of the weekend and the very end result was so dramatic. There was so much to be said about that. Where when I won in Japan, I was just running along and we ran a fuel strategy. And, you know, I wasn't the fastest car. The other four or five top competitors, they would leave a gas. Yeah, there was six or seven of those guys that, you know, they were running to hope that there was a yellow, but they all had to pit. And I saved fuel from the beginning of that run.