Patrick gave yesterday an idea of how conscious she is of her image, even if, in emotional moments, she completely forgets about that.
Having young kids watching the incident and hearing it played it over and over again on YouTube may be good for TV ratings, but she suggests it’s not good for her own fan base.
“I want kids to be fans of me and parents to be excited about watching, too.
“I don’t know if I saw any ‘Cat Fight’ headlines,” she laughed.
“It’s not something that happens every weekend,” she also added of doing the hissy fit bit with Duno.
But she admits her emotions and her sense of image aren’t always in sync.
Her celebrated incidents include her stalking down pit lane with steam coming out of her helmet after Ryan Briscoe took her out in the Indianapolis 500 or what happened at Milwaukee last year when she pushed Dan Wheldon after an incident which took her out of that race.
“My personality is definitely a passionate personality,” she said. “I’m very focused and very into what I’m doing. There are drivers out there that are more calm and there are drivers out there that are more excited and that goes right across the board.
“I think it’s just inside you. Either you are passionate and wear your heart on your sleeve or you’re not or you’re in between. It’s not a learned thing, it’s a genetic thing.
“As a driver I’m not afraid to have conversations with other drivers. But in my life I’m definitely under a close eye and there are always cameras and TVs and things around. So I just have to watch what I’m doing and where I’m doing it and that’s probably the lesson that I’ve learned here. People are always watching.”
“All I can do is pay attention to the situation and realize that, like I said, people are watching and that there is a time and place for everything and that I need to watch it, be careful. I need to not do anything that draws attention that’s not always the most positive.”
Someone asked if she thought less would be made of some of Patrick’s incidents if she were a man instead of a woman.
“I don’t know. I’ve only lived as a girl,” she said.
Being that there was no drummer in the room to do a rim shot, she followed her quote up with “Yes, it’s true.”
Scott Dixon called Patrick “a menace,” but teammate Tony Kanaan gave her the all-time ultimate compliment here yesterday.
“She’s trying to have a conversation with somebody. People think it’s a fight and they record it and put it everywhere. That’s the price to be famous. A lot of people are expecting a lot of things out of her and you guys have no idea how much that girl is strong and how much she puts into it.
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