Danica Patrick’s NASCAR run over, but Daytona and Indy on track in 2018

Danica Patrick will never appease everyone. Some will argue she never belonged in NASCAR and was wasting space in her car seat. Others respected her determination as she navigated through the controversy and the chaos.

Patrick understood the dynamics that made her one of the most famous drivers in the sport not named Earnhardt. All she wanted to do was race and find speed, a commodity she has never quite found in 189 NASCAR Cup races.

It comes down to a slow and final crawl on Sunday when Patrick races in her final Cup race as a full-time driver.

Breaking down several times, Patrick announced Friday afternoon that she won’t be back on the circuit, although she will make two high-profile cameos in the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500 in 2018. And then she expects to be totally done with competitive racing.

The particulars of which race team she will drive for in those two races remain uncertain. Her options are limited in the Daytona 500 because she can’t race for any four-car teams under NASCAR rules. Chip Ganassi Racing would be a likely spot for her in the Indianapolis 500, according to the Associated Press.

“I’m not totally done,” she said moments after composing herself several times at the start of the media conference, tears welling in her eyes as she struggled to find the right words to say.

Goodbyes are never easy, especially when a career comes to an end in a short six years of polarizing popularity.

Her final season began under a siege of sorts when Nature’s Bakery backed out of a sponsorship deal. It sent her No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing team into scramble mode, finally piecing together enough money through Aspen Dental to complete the season.

“I definitely was faced with situations at the beginning of the year that I had never faced before,” she said Friday. “I had never had sponsor issues. It made me think about things and so I’m excited about the next phase.”

The other phase always has been challenging. Patrick, 35, crossed over from IndyCar racing — where she had top-10 finishes in six of her seven Indy 500 starts — to NASCAR in 2012.

Five years later, she leaves with only seven Top 10 finishes, and one very famous pole position in the 2013 Daytona 500. She ranks 27th in points with one race remaining in 2017. But then there’s all the other stuff:

After leading the field for that Daytona race, she finished eighth and helped spike ratings 24 percent from the previous year. Patrick has appeared in 12 Super Bowl commercials for GoDaddy, a celebrity record. Beyond the sex and sizzle of bikini suits and the suggestive GoDaddy commercials, she engaged a new audience, especially young girls empowered by her story.

“There’s really no way to measure everything that she’s brought to the sport and the things that she’s done for the sport just because of the fact that I don’t think you’ll start to figure it all out until she’s probably not here,” said Kevin Harvick, her teammate at Stewart-Haas Racing. “So it’s been great to kind of see some of that from the outside looking in and being on the same team and just some of the different challenges and things that she has to face and do.

“But she’s a mega‑star. I think as you look at the things that she’s accomplished. Who do you compare it to really? There’s not anybody else lined up to fill those shoes and do the things that she’s done. So that’ll create a huge hole if she’s not here.”

We get to find out next year. The brief appearances in Daytona and Indy will rekindle the polarizing conversations again. In the middle of the fray, Danica will put on her firesuit and race with a singular purpose:

Finish ahead of all the boys.

“What I’ve always wanted is to just be remembered as a great driver, then remembered as a girl,” she said. “ I don’t care if your remember me as a girl. Of course I am; it’s obvious. But to be remembered as a great driver. That’s it.”