"It's my first real girl cover!" Danica Patrick excitedly told a reporter from the Versus cable channel about her cover photo on the June, 2009 Shape magazine, before the start of today's Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 race at Kansas Speedway, a high-speed 1 ½-mile oval track.
Patrick started the race in third position and finished fifth.
Patrick secured her place in history by being the first woman ever to win a major open-wheel racing series event, the Honda 300, held April, 2008, at Twin Ring Motegi, Japan.
She's appeared in what seems like innumerable ads and on TV shows, magazine covers and websites, but like most race car drivers used in advertising, she's almost always wearing her head-to-toe and very baggy Nomex fire-proof driving suit.
On the Shape cover, she's traded fire safety for heat-generation, in a tight and taut gold bikini.
The advertising theory is that racers are recognized much more quickly by their fans if they're shown in those suits, which many agree aren't exactly the sexiest uniforms ever developed for any profession.
The marketing theorists and professors may be right, but we're all in favor of trying something new when it comes drivers like Danica - and even Indy 500 winner and TV's "Dancing With the Stars" champion Helio Castroneves is probably as recognizable now in a tuxedo - or out of it - as in any red and white racing suit with "Penske" or "Honda" stenciled on the front.
There were three women in the Kansas race Sunday, including the 27-year old Patrick, who hails from Roscoe, IL and lives in Phoenix, AZ, Milka Duno (also 27, from Caracas, Venezuela and living in Miami, FL) and American Sarah Fisher (29, born in Commercial Point, Ohio and lives in Indianapolis).
It was easily one of the most female driver-intense IndyCar events in years. Patrick is getting all the sport's attention these days, the rock star goddess of IndyCar, seeming to always have something up her sleeve for the fans and the media, whether it's her win in Japan, a surprise fourth-place finish on a street course at last week's Long Beach Grand Prix in Southern California, or her third-place start and fifth-place finish at Kansas earlier today (her fastest lap of the day was 210.600 miles per hour, just .375 mph off the day's fastest overall lap, turned-in by fourth-place finisher Ryan Briscoe; Scott Dixon won the race with Castroneves second and Tony Kanaan third).