Danica Patrick Wrong To Curse Out Fans

Danica Patrick is in the NASCAR news all the time, but it never seems to be for a good reason. This time is no different.

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For a driver who has never finished higher than 24th in the championship standings in four-plus seasons in the NASCAR Cup Series driving for one of the series top teams, Danica Patrick is not one to brag about her skill on the track.

So, she resorted to the “next best thing”, I guess, in her mind at least: cursing out hecklers. When she refused to sign an autograph on pit road at Pocono on Friday, nearby fans did not approve of her refusal and let her know it by booing her.

That set her off.

"“I do the best I can. I mean, if you’re a real fan, you know that I’m not just — my job is not to sign autographs, right? My job is to drive a car and to tell the crew chief what’s going on. I don’t appreciate the booing. It hurts my feelings. I’m a f****** person, you know what I mean? I’m a person too. I have feelings.”"

Here is the video of the incident.

Yes, she’s a human and no human should be dehumanized for something as simple as not giving an autograph (or any other little thing she may have done in the past), especially when she doesn’t need to give out autographs to begin with as it truly is not a part of her job.

But as an athlete, a professional one at that, she can’t lose her mind over being booed at, and she especially cannot sink to the level of the immature fans and start cursing them out over it. Athletes get booed all the time in every single sport, even at the college level. Most embrace it and use it as a kind of motivation. Patrick, however, couldn’t handle it and fired back, ultimately sinking to their level.

Money is everything in racing. In addition to sponsors, the fans in the stands inject a ton of money into the sport. She needs to understand that concept moving forward. Without the fans, there would be no NASCAR, and she would have no ride. She needs to just let the haters hate, because at the end of the day, she’s the one walking away with their money.

Make no mistake about it. In no way do I think that the fans booing her were displaying anything other than disrespect and immaturity, and I do not support them at all. But the language of her response towards the fans was also anything but mature, and despite making a fair point to them regarding her job not being to sign autographs, she went out of her lane with how she chose to address it.

Next: Could this be Danica Patrick's Final Season in NASCAR?

Do you think that Danica Patrick’s response to the hecklers was appropriate? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow me on Instagram as well as Beyond the Flag on both Instagram and Twitter. Finally, don’t forget to follow along with Beyond the Flag for the latest news, opinions and analysis stemming from a number of different motorsports series. You don’t want to miss any of it.

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