NEED TO KNOW
Danica Patrick is celebrating 2026 with her mystery romance.
The former race car driver, 43, shared a subtle update on her personal life in a post on social media on Sunday, Jan. 11 when she included a photo of herself kissing an unidentified man’s cheek in a carousel of photos from her New Year’s celebrations.
The photo showed Patrick planting a kiss on the cheek of a man wearing sunglasses that read, “Happy New Year,” implying that the photo was taken at a party on Dec. 31.
Patrick’s mystery beau has his arm wrapped around her waist in the photo.
“Not so new, new year’s pics. 📸 Kinda pumped for 2026,” Patrick wrote in her caption.
Danica Patrick/Instagram
The other images in her post show Patrick spending time with friends and family over the holidays.
Patrick previously shared a photo of the same man in a Dec. 17 Instagram post, which included a shot of her with her head on his shoulder as they posed on a fake ski lift.
Patrick’s new romance comes shortly after the former NASCAR driver alleged that her ex-boyfriend, NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, was “emotionally abusive.”
Rodgers, 42, who revealed he got married last spring, met Patrick at the 2012 ESPYs. They kept in touch in the following years before confirming their relationship in January 2018. The former couple purchased a home together in Malibu, Calif., but ultimately split in July 2020.
On a May 2025 episode of The Sage Steele Show. Patrick said the “most amount of pain” she’d ever been in was her breakup with Rodgers in 2020, sharing that the relationship shook her “confidence or belief in the simple things about who I am.”
“Because it was sudden, it felt like. It was my life. So like, when you live with somebody, it’s your whole life,” she said. “And because the nature of the relationship was emotionally abusive, so that wore me down to nothing.”
“Everything was torn to bits,” Patrick added. “Yeah, he leaves a trail of blood. I don’t think I’m saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there’s been enough out there.”
One month later, on the Believe in the Good podcast, Patrick said she was single.
