Danica Patrick The Lady in Black

It’s been called the toughest of all tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule, so much so that Darlington (S.C.) Raceway years ago was nicknamed “The Track Too Tough To Tame.”Darlington is an egg-shaped oval, 1.366 miles in length – the odd shape because the western half of the track required a tighter radius in the turns as founder Harold Brasington promised Sherman Ramsey, who owned a farm next to the property, that he wouldn’t disturb his minnow pond when he built the track in 1949.

The odd shape also means that, to find the fast way around the track, drivers run extremely close to the outside walls in each turn. They sometimes brush up against them and thus earn what has affectionately become known as a “Darlington Stripe” on the right side of the car. And the black marks left on the walls by the tires rubbing up against them all race weekend have led to the track’s other nickname, “The Lady in Black.”

As Sprint Cup Series teams head to Darlington this weekend for the Southern 500, Danica Patrick will be the lady in black at “The Lady in Black” as her No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) features a special black paint scheme in honor of the small businesses GoDaddy helps keep fiscally “in the black.”

Small-business owners like Val Figarella, owner of MotorGrrl and a GoDaddy customer since 2004, rely on the company for the tools they need to successfully run their businesses and operate “in the black,” financially. 

After riding motorcycles for roughly seven years, Figarella found herself fed up with trying to find honest mechanics and a safe place to work on her bike in New York City. So, she took matters into her own hands and developed MotorGrrl – a one-stop shop for all things motorcycle-related, from storage to ordering parts to service and maintenance, and even educational workshops. Figarella started MotorGrrl from her East Village basement apartment 11 years ago and thanks, in part, to the products and services that GoDaddy provides small businesses, her company has continued to grow and now operates out of a 50,000-square-foot, full-service garage in Brooklyn, New York.

The success of Figarella and MotorGrrl is one example of the millions of customers who GoDaddy continues to help easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their small-business ventures. And Figarella will be representing those millions of customers on the No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet this weekend as her name appears above the right-side door and the MotorGrrl logo adorns the car’s television panel.

While GoDaddy customers like Figarella have made considerable achievements, Patrick is still working to improve her results at Darlington. In three Sprint Cup Series start at “The Lady in Black,” her best finish at the track is a 22nd-place effort earned in April 2014. She also scored a 12th-place result in her lone Xfinity Series start at the track in 2012.

As a result, as Patrick and GoDaddy head to Darlington to celebrate the company’s successful small-business customers who operate “in the black,” Patrick will look to find a similar level of on-track success as she tackles the “Lady in Black” this weekend.

TSC PR