Blast from the past: Danica Patrick will have GoDaddy sponsorship for Daytona, Indy

No matter who Danica Patrick ends up driving for at Daytona, she and her car will be wearing green.

One big piece of the Danica Patrick farewell to NASCAR and IndyCar has fallen into place thanks to one of her former longtime sponsors. She’s reuniting with GoDaddy,the company that helped her transition from open wheel to stock car racing in the first place.

ESPN reports that GoDaddy will sponsor Patrick in both the 2018 Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500, removing one of the biggest hurdles for her to appear in both races before she retires. The company sponsored her during the final stages of her IndyCar career and was even more associated with her from 2012 through 2015 in the NASCAR Cup Series.

But things have changed quickly in just a few years for GoDaddy, once known strictly for a place to buy cheap internet domains but now a company that positions itself as a one-stop shop for establishing or beefing up one’s online brand. Its marketing campaigns are quite a bit different now as well.

In other words, don’t expect to see any commercials like this from the new Patrick/GoDaddy partnership:

Now the only question is whose cars will sport that unmistakable shade of GoDaddy green. Patrick isn’t at the point where she has anything to reveal on that front yet, but she sounds like she’s getting closer — and she needs to be, with the Daytona 500 only a month away.

"“We’re definitely pretty close on all that stuff, especially on the NASCAR side. We’ll be announcing that as soon as we can. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t going to be a situation that would give me an opportunity to run up front and win the race.”"

That last part is sure to cause major speculation among NASCAR fans, as running up front knocks out a bunch of lesser teams. Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske, organizations that could have given her a seat in both races, have already essentially declared themselves out of the running, as has Roush Fenway Racing, sparing her a potentially awkward reunion with former beau Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

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Teams like Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and former employer Stewart-Haas Racing already field the Cup Series maximum four cars. Maybe the likes of Richard Childress Racing or Furniture Row Racing, home of reigning champion Martin Truex Jr., would take a shot with Patrick for the Daytona 500.

Regardless, she won’t be hard to miss, and the sponsorship part of the equation was always going to be a big one for what we’re apparently now calling the “Danica Double.” Things actually are falling into place for Patrick, and she just might pull off the goodbye she wants after all.