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IndyCar: Danica Patrick’s Indianapolis 500 odds look really, really slim

By Asher Fair

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - MAY 27: Danica Patrick, driver of the #7 Team Go Daddy Andretti autosport Dallara Honda, looks on during final practice on Carb Day for the the 95th Indianapolis 500 Mile Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 27, 2011 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS, IN - MAY 27: Danica Patrick, driver of the #7 Team Go Daddy Andretti autosport Dallara Honda, looks on during final practice on Carb Day for the the 95th Indianapolis 500 Mile Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 27, 2011 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images) /
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The odds of Danica Patrick racing in the Indianapolis 500 in the 2018 IndyCar season appear to be getting slimmer and slimmer by the day.

Nearly two full months have passed since Danica Patrick, 35, announced that the 2018 Indianapolis 500 would be the final race of her racing career. An entry in that race for her would mark a comeback to IndyCar after nearly seven years. But her odds of landing a ride in that race are looking slimmer than they ever have right now.

Prior to the final race of the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Florida, Patrick announced that she would race in the 102nd running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” after racing in the 60th annual Daytona 500 in NASCAR just over three months beforehand. However, she announced that her full-time racing career would end when the 2017 season ended.

At first, it was speculated that Chip Ganassi Racing would be her team for both events. Chip Ganassi Racing are one of two teams with a team in both the Cup Series and IndyCar, and the other team of that type, Team Penske, are at capacity for this year’s Indianapolis 500. Chip Ganassi Racing made sense for Patrick.

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However, her talks with Chip Ganassi Racing then stalled. This made Schmidt Peterson Motorsports her most likely landing spot. Schmidt Peterson Motorsports was set to field three cars in the race with two of those cars being driven by the team’s two full-time drivers.

However, the third and final projected driver for the team in the race, Tristan Gommendy, lost his ride as a result of the fact that the team’s partnership with Didier Calmels, who had planned on partnering with the team to field the 39-year-old Gommendy, fell through after they received backlash for dealing with the convicted murderer. This made Patrick a viable candidate for the team’s third seat.

Now Schmidt Peterson Motorsports have ruled out Patrick as a potential third driver. There aren’t many options left for her at this point as the field continues to fill up.

Aside of the fact that there hasn’t been much discussion about it, there is not much known about her landing a ride in the 2018 Daytona 500 yet either, so we won’t speculate as to what that might mean just yet even though that race is next month while the Indianapolis 500 is not until the end of May.

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Envision this. It’s 11:00 AM on the morning of Sunday, May 27th, 2018. The field of 33 cars is all lined up in 11 rows of three on the front straightaway of Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana. Is Danica Patrick the driver of one of those 33 cars? By the looks of things right now, that is a question we might be asking for a while yet.

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