Six Months Later

Yep, it has been 6 months since I started this internship and I can say without a doubt it has been an absolute blast. When I accepted with DRI, I knew it would probably be one of my coolest experiences yet, but it has also turned out to be one of my most educational. I’ve learned a lot about public relations from a different viewpoint not only from Haley, but also a lot of other public relations professionals meandering through the garages and paddocks. I can already see myself using things that I have learned in this internship on projects in my PR classes. I have even found myself considering that this is something I want to do post grad- something I really didn’t consider in my 4 years at Butler.

As I write this post, I can’t stop laughing at the ups and downs that are the past 6 months. A lot of crazy stuff happened that makes me realize that somebody should probably consider turning Haley’s life into a sitcom.  From traveling and autograph sessions to media availabilities and races there really is something hysterical in even the dullest moments.

So I have to thank everyone- fans, media, sponsors, crew guys, etc.- that have made the past 6 months at Danica Racing, Inc. so entertaining.

I still have to give a big shoutout to Michael Kaltenmark for getting me hooked up with Haley last March. This really wouldn’t have been possible without him. Ironically, I will be interning for Michael next semester on campus as one of the Web Marketing Communications intern. Beyond the typical WebMarComm duties, I’m hoping I can also help MK on PR for Butler’s live mascot, Butler Blue II. What? Your alma mater’s mascot doesn’t have a PR rep?

As I start my new internship in January, I have to say Haley hasn’t quite pushed me out the door yet even though the season has ended. This is by no means my last blog post. I have a writing project in the works to do over the winter for next season and I’ll try to help where I can. I’ll probably stick close with the Danica Racing crew until I graduate next May and get a real person job. Although, they might have something else to say about that!

Cheers!

Because Goodbye is Final

I had planned a post for this week to solely talk about Danica’s final scheduled IndyCar race in Las Vegas. Clearly, Sunday’s tragic event has changed that. I really haven’t stopped thinking about Sunday’s accident. I’ve had a draft on this blog written since Monday night and it’s changed about 10 times since.

People have asked my thoughts on it the past week in person, on Twitter or comments on my previous blog post. So I thought I would use this outlet to gather and organize my thoughts. My answer to most people’s inquiries is it is just an odd, unexplainable feeling.

Ironically, I met Dan Wheldon just two weeks ago at Kentucky Speedway. He came up to Haley, myself and Mike Kitchel of Panther Racing on pit lane during qualifying. Most of the conversation was giving Haley and Mike a hard time about having ‘assistants.’ However, one thing stood out in my mind. Without hesistation, Dan stuck out his hand to me and said ‘Hi, I’m Dan’ and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t taken aback by this. Lately, I have run into quite a few people who are hesitant about meeting new people for whatever reason. Dan didn’t skip a beat. I admire that.

Even though I didn’t meet Dan face-to-face until October, his motor coach was parked next to Danica’s during the month of May. I remember after the 500, Haley and I came back to the lot of find Dan and Susie’s oldest son, Sebastian, playing outside not even realizing (or caring) the celebration that was going on not far from him. His father had just won his second Indy 500 and Sebastian was full of laughter and play.  It is tragic to lose someone so young, but I am comforted knowing that Dan is in a better place. My heart aches and is heavy for Susie, the boys and the rest of the Wheldon family. I pray that the Wheldon family will find the laughter that I saw from Sebastian again.

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I was not in Las Vegas last weekend for the race because of a family wedding. Like many of you, I was watching the race and accident as it unfolded. I was also watching the tweets come in on the @danicaracing page. Many tweets were prayers for Dan and his family and a few others were completely out of left field. How dare anyone make this tragedy about anything other than what it is. Yes, this is not the way we want to remember Danica’s final IndyCar race, BUT no one wants to remember any race like this. A wife is now a widow, two boys can no longer hug their father and family and friends are left to pick up the pieces and move on.

I am relieved that Sunday was the last race of the season and that Danica has the next two weekends off. When I’m standing next to Danica’s car before the race or qualifying, I really don’t think about what could really happen. I guess with all the innovations in safety, we expect drivers to pop out of cars after an accident time and time again. Without a doubt, it will be difficult to watch Danica, and any other driver for that matter, get strapped into a car from now on.

For those of you that were not watching the ABC broadcast on Sunday, Marty Reid said the most perfect words in a time when most of us could not fathom the reality of the situation and there’s no better way to sign off on this post.

“People ask me why I sign off ‘until we meet again.’ Because goodbye is final.

Goodbye Dan Wheldon.”

Off to Las Vegas!

This is a big weekend for the Danica Racing crew for many reasons. Danica and the team’s schedule is jam packed with fan, sponsor, media and, oh yeah, on track events. Since the schedule is just a little too big to tweet out I thought I would give you a snapshot of the fan events. Thanks to everyone who participated in our #7DaysofGiveaways Twitter contest this weekend and congratulations again to our winners. I hope all the fans have fun this weekend!

Wednesday, October 12

3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. 7- Eleven appearance at 1100 Las Vegas Blvd North (corner of Las Vegas & Charleston)

6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. IndyCar Autograph Session at Macy’s, Fashion Show Mall- 3200 S. Las Vegas Blvd.

Thursday, October 13

6:00 p.m. IZOD IndyCar Series Parade on Las Vegas Blvd

9:00 p.m. IZOD IndyCar Series Kick-Off Party

Saturday, October 15

10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. IndyCar Autograph Session at Mandalay Bay Fan Zone

11:00 a.m. IndyCar Fan Appreciation Event

For more information on these events and the entire weekend, check out the IZOD IndyCar World Championship website.

Don’t miss Danica’s final IndyCar race before moving to NASCAR full time in 2012. If you aren’t going to Las Vegas for the race, you can catch all the race action on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. on ABC.

The Twitter Side of Things

Late last week I found myself looking through past Twitter mentions on my personal and the @danicaracing accounts. I was really excited at how much both accounts have grown in the past few months. So I thought for this post I would talk about the social media side of Danica Racing and how social media helps connect us to DP’s fans. As most of you know, I help Haley manage the DR account. We use @danicaracing to send race focused info so that DP can send fun and personal tweets from @DanicaPatrick.

Let me just tell yall, it’s never a dull race weekend on the Danica Racing Twitter page. I get very excited when I am tweetcasting during races with how active fans are on Twitter. People are hilarious, whether they realize it or not. We get some pretty bizarre tweets from people who accidentally @mention us to spam to tweets that make me say ‘WHAT?!’ There are tweets that I chuckle at for days after reading and tweets that take every part of me not to respond to. Needless to say, people always have something to say about everything.

On the other side of Twitter some of @danicaracing’s followers have reached out to me on my personal Twitter account- which is something I think is so cool. For me I enjoysharing small tidbits of my life whether someone is actually listening or not. Social media is incredibly interesting to me. I love how people interact and how total strangers can strike up the most random conversations.  Some of my most random Twitter convos have been from Danica fans. Even more interesting, most of those convos had nothing to do with Danica or racing:

• I’ve talked with a guy several times who is from my hometown. I think he works for the Series, but I’m not actually sure. Obviously I’ve never met him face to face.
• I was really shocked with how many fans wished me a good first day of classes earlier in the semester. It makes you feel like you are a part of a bigger community beyond the racetrack.
• I met a fellow motorsports intern through a #FollowFriday mention. I finally had a chance to meet her face to face in Mid Ohio.
• Have you started following @nascarasm yet? Oh my God. HILARIOUS. Especially his tweets mentioning Go Daddy.
• I somehow picked up the label Danistar Intern- I think I’ll keep it.
• I can usually count on @snicksrolos to reply. At least one person likes my tweeting.
• I’ve had some pretty interesting convos with followers about the weather who live nowhere near the Midwest. Don’t ask me why.

One of my favorite parts of managing a Twitter account is doing contests and other fun things. Be sure to stick close to the @danicaracing in the coming weeks as we have some awesome plans for our followers.

Haley and I are leaving for the Kentucky Speedway bright and early Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m. I think this may be the earliest I have left for a race not including the 500. We have two practice sessions and qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday afternoon. Plus it’s going to be super cold in Kentucky this weekend so you can probably find me freezing out on pit lane.

Any readers joining us in Kentucky?

Cheers!

Where did August go?

Wow! August seems to have flown by! I’ve been super busy the past few weeks and I can’t believe September is almost here. I also can’t believe that I haven’t posted a blog since August 1. It seems like yesterday Haley and I were sweating to death out on pit lane in Mid-Ohio. As you probably assume by now, I haven’t been to a race since Ohio.

Right before that weekend, I got possession of my new apartment and it’s been a long and drawn out process to get everything moved. Two weeks ago I started my fall semester internship and that is keeping me on my toes to say the least. Oh and I have one other little thing called classes that started last Wednesday. I am officially a senior at Butler University and I have officially started worrying about finding a job.

Somewhere in all that chaos, Danica was also very busy. Yes, you now all know Danica will be hanging out with the NASCAR crowd from now on. Seeing friends since last Thursday’s announcement, I’ve had a few questions that I thought I would share the answers with you all.

What do you think of Danica going to NASCAR?

I am extremely happy for Danica. JR Motorsports is an awesome team and, as a Columbus native, I couldn’t be more pleased for the Danica/Tony collaboration. I’ve spent the past week reading hundreds of articles on the big announcement. Some criticized her for moving to stock cars. Here’s the thing, people now change careers up to seven times in a lifetime. Why should DP be any different? As someone always looking for my next challenge and excitement, I can appreciate Danica’s decision.

Did you know DP’s plans before the announcement?

Yes and no. Haley emailed me on Wednesday night before leaving for Phoenix which gave me confirmation. No I did not know the plans exactly. However, I’m pretty good at picking up tidbits of information-said and unsaid-and putting things together. In this case I read between the lines.

All in all, I wish Danica nothing but the best. I have a few blog ideas in the works that I am hoping you all will enjoy. From the fans to wrapping up the season, I have a lot to talk about. Until then, cheers!

Back to the track…

Hiya everyone!

Another off weekend means another Danica contest. This past weekend’s contest put Danica’s fans to the test and showed off fantastic (or lack there of) rhyming skills. The task was easy. Come up with your best Danica rhyme/poem/haiku in 140 characters or less. Of course the Danica Store offered up our fantastic prize. A big thanks to everyone who entered our contest. Continue to follow us for more contests and giveaways.

Find this and more Danica gear at www.danicaracingstore.com

Our winner was very creative with her rhyming skills (and her profile pic wasn’t too bad either). Congrats Nita!

We also had several other great poems that impressed Haley and I so here are our top 5 honorable mentions in no particular order.

Haley and I will be off to Mid-Ohio bright and early Friday morning for another busy weekend. I’m excited to get back at it. I was starting to have withdrawls! Be sure to follow me on Twitter (@emilyelliott2 and @danicaracing) for all the madness Haley, Danica and I get into this weekend.

Cheers!

And the winner is…

I know, I know, I know I haven’t blogged in a reeeeealllllly long time! My apologies, but I haven’t been sure what to write about lately that is actually worth reading. BUT I’m back now so no worries!

Most of July has been a tricky month for me since I’m not tagging along to the two Canadian races. I’m not quite up to international traveler status yet. So to keep me busy I thought it’s time to give away some Danica stuff!

This past weekend’s contest was for best photo caption. The picture (below) was one of my favorites from when Danica traveled with Helio and Dario to New York the week before the 500. This contest gave away a #7 Go Daddy 1:64 diecast- which I’m hoping that our winner will come to a race and have it signed by DP. I also can’t forget to thank our friends at the Danica Racing Store for providing our prize.

1:64 2011 Go Daddy Danica IndyCar Diecast

Speaking of our winner, @John_Leckliter’s caption made me laugh out loud as soon as I saw it. Congrats John!

I am very happy to see that we had overwhelming participation for our photo caption contest and it was very difficult to pick just one winner. The 10 entries below are our honorable mentions because they give me a good chuckle and, as you can see, the winner had some pretty good competition to be up against.

Since I love my blog readers so much you all will be the first to know that during our next off weekend (July 30 & 31) we will have another Twitter contest. I’m keeping my lips sealed on what it will be, but I will share that our friends at the Danica Racing Store gave us this for the prize!

Win this in the @DanicaRacing contest July 30 & 31!

Haley & Hop

Happy Wednesday everyone! Last weekend was a pretty good race for the #7 crew with Danica posting her highest finish of the year. It was nice to be back in IndyCar for a weekend since I hadn’t seen everyone since the 500.

For this post, I thought I would give you a snapshot of the Danica Racing, Inc. crew. Some might think it takes an army to keep DRI running, but that’s not quite the case because the DRI crew, Haley and Hop, run one tight ship. Most of you are pretty familiar with Haley, but may not know Hop.

Haley is Danica’s motorsports publicist and personal manager. She takes care of everything for Danica Racing, Inc. While we are on track, a lot of her job is keeping everything on schedule and fixing any problems that arise. Leading up to race weekend, she is working with media, sponsors, etc. to set up interviews, meet-n-greets, etc. for race weekend. You might have also noticed that Haley stands right next to Danica whenever she is being interviewed. This is for two reasons. First, we pull a quote from Danica after the race to be used for a press release. She also stands there to ensure that media questions don’t get out of control. It’s safe to say that Haley’s job isn’t the same day to day. One day she could be tackling fan mail and the next she’s with Danica at a photo shoot.

Now on to Hop…

Hop is Danica’s motor coach driver and one very funny guy. If Haley is taking care of everything on the business side, Hop is taking care of everything else. His job description has to be very, very broad. Since Danica and Haley are busy with on track business, Hop takes care of anything the might arise during the race weekend. Hop would do anything for us and tries to keep things running smoothly. Hop is the kind of guy that will work his hardest for you, but at the end of the day he’s a good guy to kick back and shoot the wind with.

With only two individuals, Danica Racing, Inc. may not quite be the army you were expecting. However, Haley and Hop are incredibly efficient, hardworking and keep things moving.

Your Danica Questions

Hi everyone! I finally have time this week to answer the questions I asked for last week. I was a little bummed I didn’t receive many. C’mon guys, you had soooooo many questions during Indy. However, I did receive several kind notes about my blog and @danicaracing and wanted to thank you all for reading my blog, checking out the Flickr page and tweeting at us.

What’s the most unselfish thing you have seen Danica do?

During a rainy/cold day at Indy, there were A LOT of fourth graders out at the speedway on field trips. We ended up going out to pit lane in hopes that we would get a chance to run. It was just too cold to run so DP decided to walk back to the garage and signed autograph after autograph for what seemed like hundreds of kids. It took forever to get back to the garage, but Danica made the day of a lot of kids.

Do you get to go out and enjoy the cities you travel to for races?

Since I’ve only been with DRI since the beginning of May, I haven’t had much chance to travel with the team. However, based on my experience from May and the Nationwide race in Chicago, we keep a pretty busy schedule during race weekends. We are at the track for the majority of the day and by the time we leave we really just want to eat dinner and go to sleep.

Who is the girl that’s always following Danica around?

That’s Haley. Haley is Danica’s personal manager/publicist and keeps Danica Racing, Inc. running. She sets up schedules, works with media and puts out fires. She’s pretty awesome at what she does.

Why didn’t you go to Texas?

The team travel schedule was set long before I confirmed with DRI that I would be joining them for the summer. No worries, I’m back this weekend for Milwaukee.

Are you texting while driving?

This question made me chuckle, but I wanted to put it on here. Tweets during the race are written by me, or if I’m not at the race that weekend, Haley keeps you all updated.

I’m leaving for Milwaukee on Friday and am very excited to get back to the track for the weekend. I will keep you updated on Twitter and will post pictures to our Flickr page. If you ever have an idea of something you would like me to blog about, feel free to shoot ideas my way.

Ask the Intern

I don’t have a lot to talk about this weekend since I won’t be tagging along to Texas so I thought I would let my readers give me something to write about.

I get a lot of questions on Twitter and my blog about my internship, Butler, Danica, etc. So for this post, I thought I would open up my blog to the fans. Write a comment on this post or send me a message on Twitter (@emilyelliott2 or @danicaracing) and I will do my best to answer them all.

Feel free to ask me anything, but if your question is gross/creepy/just-plain-weird you might as well find a new question. My blog, my rules.

I’ll try to post all the questions and answers together early next week.

Ask away!