Doyel: Look at these idiots around Danica Patrick

INDIANAPOLIS – The guy with the lawn chair and the car fender, he was weird. Which makes him like so many of the people – so many of the men – who come to the racetrack to hound Danica Patrick.

This guy, the one with the chair and the fender, he came to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month. He had a pile of Danica paraphernalia, pictures and posters and Lord knows what else, for her to sign. How he managed to lug all of that from the parking lot is a mystery, what with the car fender he was pulling, a piece of sheet metal that apparently had fallen off Patrick’s racecar during the 2017 NASCAR season. I’m saying: the whole front end of a Ford Fusion. I’m saying: weird.

Danica to host the 2018 ESPYs: 'I have a thing for doing things for the first time as a woman'

The grand finale: Danica Patrick on her last race, the Indy 500 that got away, and why she can win

“Just five minutes of her time,” the guy is telling anyone who will listen at Danica’s garage. They're not being rude to the guy, they know how the business works, but they’re subtly shining him on because that’s what he deserves. Oh, just five minutes of her time? Is that all you want?

You and every other …

Well, Danica’s people aren’t having it, and eventually the guy with the car fender gets the hint and leaves.

Kidding!

The guy is a professional weirdo, so he came prepared. The lawn chair, remember? He arranges all of his Danica bits and pieces on the burning-hot pavement – the pictures and posters, Lord knows what else – and unfolds his lawn chair. And then he has a seat right there in front of her garage door. If Danica Patrick tries to walk out, this guy will be there. He’ll be waiting.

* * *

This is the tortured life Danica Patrick has lived for more than a decade, a career that first went viral where it will end on Sunday: at the Indianapolis 500.

It has been weird, men have been weird, since that group of seven shirtless idiots stood outside her garage the morning of her international breakthrough, the 2005 Indianapolis 500, with her name painted on their white and hairy chests: one letter per man, six letters in all, arranged in a shocking show of grotesqueness: D-A-N-I-C-A.

The seventh idiot? He had Danica’s car number painted on his white and hairy chest, No. 16 back in those days, along with a heart. Because this was love.

No, this was weird. It’s always been weird. And for a minute, just one moment, can we set aside our Danica feelings, whatever they may be – and they’re strong, whatever they are – and consider what it’s like to be her? Not just the fame and fortune, not just the fun stuff, or the stuff we think is fun, if you think having seven shirtless strangers painting your name on their bodies and showing up at your place of work sounds like fun.

* * *

Celebrities such as Danica Patrick, they aren’t just a premise, a die-cast concept. Nor are they animals to be gawked at, though good Lord are we a society of gawkers. It’s the little things, the things that hit you out of the blue, that smack you right out of your own shoes and into the shoes of someone else, that are the most powerful. So imagine being me, imagine being in my shoes, the other day. You’re looking for Ed Carpenter’s garage, heading that way for a short interview, and his garage was easy to find.

It’s the one next to Danica's.

They are on the same team for this race, this final Indy 500 go-around for Danica. How she ended up with Ed Carpenter Racing, and not Penske or Andretti or Rahal or Ganassi, is an interesting story that we might never know in its entirety. But I can tell you this: She tried to end up on some of those other teams, and they weren’t interested. They didn’t want to deal with the circus, the clown show, that follows Danica. Did I say clowns? Sorry, wrong extension of the circus analogy. This is better: They didn’t want to deal with the elephantine level of excrement that follows her.

No, that’s not a shot at Danica. That’s a shot at you people.

And by writing “you people,” by writing this entire story, I need you to do me a favor and get over yourself. If you’re not the weirdo with the fender and the lawn chair, if you’re not the idiots with Danica’s name or (shiver) a heart painted on your chest, if you’re not completely unhinged, then “you people” isn’t you.

'I got his email': Danica Patrick on meeting Aaron Rodgers in 2012

It’s them, the people I saw on my first trip this month to IMS. There we are – you’re standing in my shoes, remember – standing outside Carpenter’s garage, waiting for an interview, when we notice the commotion next door. Well, it’s always a commotion next door. The people who come to Patrick’s garage are legion and they remind me of an anthill, millions upon millions of mindless creatures milling about, acting on instinct.

And now it’s like someone has kicked over the anthill, because all those people are moving. They’re moving in unison, and it takes me several seconds to see why, but there she is in the middle of the moving anthill: Danica. She has come out of her garage and is walking across Gasoline Alley to the competition trailer, and these people, you people, are making it difficult. You’re crowding her, invading her personal space in the quest for her signature, bumping into her on either side – I’m sure that’s an accident, you creepy idiots – as she commits the crime of having somewhere to be and trying to get there.

This is hard to watch, which is why I’m telling you about it. A small moment in Danica’s life, a nothing moment I’m sure, but it’s uncomfortable to watch and dozens of people – dozens of men – harass her all the way to the competition trailer. They don’t see it as harassment, I’m sure.

Just five minutes …

Before she can get to the trailer, and the door she’s trying to reach is literally a football’s throw away, she gives up. The group, this a pack of hyenas on a single lioness, has brought her down. She stops. She starts signing autographs. This is where I turn away, because I hate it when bad people get what they want.

* * *

It’s the media, too. We’re bad people.

Folks who were at IMS in 2005 when Danica became Danica, this household name, this die-cast concept, they still remember what happened when she climbed out of her car after the race. It was the conclusion of a remarkable debut, much more than a fourth-place finish in her first Indy 500, the start of a career here that features 29 total laps led and six top-10 finishes in seven Indy 500 starts. She’d been the fastest car almost all week, the fastest driver in practice day after day, then challenging for the pole after nearly careening into the wall on Turn 1 on her first qualifying effort. In the race itself she comes out of a restart on lap 190 and takes the lead, and IMS explodes in a way that people who were there cannot forget. So loud, the sound of dozens of four-wheel rocket ships was drowned out by cheers for Danica Patrick.

So the race ends and she’s fourth and climbing out her car on pit row, and the media is everywhere. Only thing missing is six of us idiots with our shirts off and the letters D-A-N-I-C-A painted across our white and hairy chests, and a seventh idiot with (shiver) a heart. We’re crowding her even before she can get her helmet off, and there’s a picture of it in the IndyStar, and the picture doesn’t do it justice because it’s snapped moments before the media pushes closer, collapsing on itself and now onto her, invading her personal space, bumping her on either side. I’m sure that was an accident, you creepy media idiots.

And we are creepy. We are idiots. This week, at a news conference that went one question too long, Danica fielded this finale:

What’s it like to date Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers?

What’s it like to … what?

“There it is,” Danica says, so dry and disbelieving, or maybe she wasn’t in disbelief. She’s seen her share of craziness from racing people, us people, you people. She was there, of course she was there, at Pocono last June when her security stops fans from getting her autograph after qualifying and fans start booing and here comes Danica, not a driver, not this die-cast thing, but an actual person.

Help support local journalism: 6 benefits of an IndyStar digital subscription

“Since I’m old, instead of taking the booing, what I want to tell you is like, I’m doing the very best I can,” she tells the crowd, waving her hands and pleading with them, so frustrated and so helpless. “If you’re a real fan, you know that I’m not just like … 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 (expletive) person, you know what I mean? I’m a person, too. I have feelings. When you boo me, it hurts my feelings, OK? Please just be supportive fans. I’ll do everything I can.”

Danica walks off. The video picks up this final sentence from a fan. A man, of course:

“You didn’t sign on the way out, either.”

You’re lucky she ever signed anything, you idiot, which reminds me of the guy with the Ford Fusion fender. He sat there the other day until she showed up, however many hours that was, just sitting and staring and in general behaving like he ought to be doing exactly what he’s doing. Eventually Danica comes out and signs his pictures and posters and Lord know what else. She signs his stupid fender.

That night when the sun sets on Gasoline Alley, that lawn chair is still sitting there. It has been left behind, empty now, discarded by the empty vessel of a human being who came to the track and got what he wanted.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.