Danica Patrick losing GoDaddy sponsorship in 2016 Popular driver without primary sponsorship for No. 10 Chevrolet after this season.

Brant James | USA TODAY Sports

A season of transition for Danica Patrick has taken on another element of uncertainty.

GoDaddy, the Sprint Cup driver's long-time primary sponsor and benefactor announced Wednesday that it will not return to NASCAR after this season, leaving one of the sport's most popular drivers and most recognized names without full-time funding as she seeks a new contract with Stewart-Haas Racing.

Patrick, 33, is in the final year of her three-year contract at SHR after transitioning through the Xfinity Series from IndyCar.

Both Patrick and SHR officials have expressed hope she will return in 2016 to the four-car organization, which is co-owned by driver Tony Stewart and Gene Haas and also fields cars for three-time Cup champion Stewart, reigning champion Kevin Harvick and 2004 titlist Kurt Busch.

Patrick called GoDaddy an "incredible partner" and said she hoped to continue the relationship. Both GoDaddy chief marketing officer Phil Bienert and Patrick told USA TODAY Sports that it hoped to negotiate a personal services contract to continue the nine-year partnership.

"I think initially the first thought is 'bad' because it feels like it's going away, but then I have to remember that it's not really going away for me, it's just going away in the way that it was," Patrick told USA TODAY Sports. "I really feel like there's really a lot of good work to do. We've really grown up together."

The move comes as GoDaddy, a global online domain registrar serving more than 13 million customers in 37 countries, shifts focus toward small business and international markets. It has been at least an associate sponsor of Patrick since 2007 and became her main backer in the 2010 IndyCar season at Andretti Autosport. The decision, Bienert told USA TODAY Sports, should be viewed as the result of a relationship reaching fruition, not stagnation, because "we recognize in the United States we are not really in a brand-building phase anymore."

Though the company has been making a methodical shift toward global markets, and took months evaluate its sponsorship options, the move away from NASCAR was decisive.

"The process that we took on this, we were very data-driven about it," Bienert said. "We actually hired a third party to help us evaluate all our sponsorship dollars, the effectiveness of it. What the data showed was that this platform has been great for us, but where we are right now, it's time to shift.

"We finally had that data, probably Friday afternoon, then wanted to talk to Danica. We've not been sitting on this. We really wanted to do our due diligence for the past couple months or two to get to the right answer."

The answer was unwelcome but not unexpected for Patrick, after being credited by Bienert with helping grow the company's brand awareness to 81 percent domestically.

"It's not accurate to say this scenario never crossed any of our minds," she said. "Sponsorship is tough to come by."

Patrick, agent Alan Zucker and SHR's business team will gauge just how tough that is for Patrick beginning immediately. It figures to be a strenuous task even considering her fame and uniqueness, as established stars Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR's most popular driver, have been forced to cobble 36-race sponsorships from numerous companies in recent seasons after being unable to land a full-time backer. The chore will be eased some by beginning now, rather than in the late summer when driver and sponsor contracts are often targeted for finalization. It costs about $16 million-$18 million to carry a Cup car for a full season.

"I appreciate the transparency and the speedy answers," Patrick said of GoDaddy's decision. "We have been waiting for a while to know where GoDaddy's at, but they have been doing their own research and figuring out where best to spend their marketing dollars to grow their company even more. So as soon as that information came through, I got a text message two days ago saying we're going to have a call tomorrow and that tomorrow was yesterday and so I found out yesterday afternoon."

Bienert added that Patrick's "record-setting season" made the decision more difficult. After beginning the year with a relatively new crew chief in Daniel Knost -- who joined her pit box with three races remaining in the 2014 season -- and tempering expectations, she is currently 16th in the standings. She established a record this season for most career top-10s by a woman, with six. She has two of those this year.

"Danica is having her best season ever and we're cheering her on every single weekend," said Bienert, a former Ford and Jaguar executive. "But it still doesn't change the realities of what we need to accomplish for the business."

PHOTOS: Danica Patrick through the years

Patrick said she wants to return to SHR, where team executives including Haas have insisted since January that she is a productive and welcome addition.

"I would love to be back at Stewart-Haas," Patrick said. "Stewart-Haas has said they would love to have me and obviously we would have to go and do some work and try and find a primary that's either willing to step up or come in. And so, we're working through that and all that has to happen first. We need to find sponsorship and then we can move forward with the rest of it. From everything I have heard and everything I feel, I absolutely want to move forward with Stewart-Haas."

Brett Frood, executive vice president of SHR, said in a statement:

"It is our intent to continue raising our performance bar with all four Stewart-Haas Racing teams and delivering results to our constituents now and in the future. With Danica, we see a driver with unparalleled resolve and tenacity. She is an individual who transcends the sport and we look forward to fostering new partnerships for her and the No. 10 team."

While it is possible the organization could string together sponsorship for all 36 Cup races, the preference certainly would be to sign another primary sponsor that would carry at least the majority of the races.

SHR's family of sponsors includes: Aspen Dental, TaxACT, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Jimmy John's, Bass Pro Shops, Mobil 1, Haas Automation, Chevrolet, Outback Steakhouse, ditech, Rush Truck Centers, Code 3 Associates and State Water Heaters.

Patrick has carried Aspen Dental and TaxACT as main sponsors on her car for a handful of races.

Patchwork deals have become more common, however, as the cost of sponsorship may be too high for some companies.

Patrick's sponsor allure is based in inimitability and potential. In 2005, as an IndyCar rookie, she set the fastest pole speed for a woman at the Indianapolis 500, led 19 laps and set then-gender records in starting and finishing fourth. Patrick finished third at Indianapolis in 2009. In 2008 at Motegi, Japan, she became the first woman to win an IndyCar race. And in 2013, she won the pole for the Daytona 500.

GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving and Patrick had espoused a satisfaction with their relationship as she transitioned to NASCAR, with Irving declaring that her on-track performance did not matter. He called her a "superstar" Wednesday.

Still, Patrick's role as the face of the company in television commercials had waned in recent years as its marketing campaign shifted more toward small businesses. The sometimes titillating commercials that earned Patrick and the company both awareness and criticism had been replaced by a more conservative approach and Patrick had become more involved in promoting STEM initiatives and recruitment of female employees for the company. She would have starred in a 14th ad for the Super Bowl this year, but it was pulled after protests from animal rights activists.

Patrick told USA TODAY Sports this February that she was comfortable in her new role with GoDaddy and how it had evolved: "Do I still like to be feminine and all those things that I have done in the past? Yeah. But it's not the most important thing anymore. When we're young we dress for attention. When we get older we want people to know how smart we are. That's kind of how I feel both GoDaddy and I have been. We've really honestly grown up together."

GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons often boasted that his company would sponsor Patrick even if she decided to become a professional figure skater. But that was before the company was sold to private equity firms for $2.5 billion in 2011 and went public this month as a global brand with differing objectives and approaches. Pleased in believing she helped push the company to a point it could make such a difficult decision that, ironically, now affects her livelihood, Patrick seemed whimsical about the journey.

"I guess the best relationships are the ones that are true so that's why I think this will continue for me," she said. "But, yeah, it's definitely a little bit of a new concept to wrap my head around and will (be) sad to not drive that green GoDaddy car. But it will make me look at all the pictures now with a little bit of fondness and memories of how much we've done and how far we've come."

Follow James on Twitter @brantjames