Katherine Legge Relishes in Impressive 17th-Place Brickyard 400 Run

Photo: Josh Calloni, TobyChristie.com

For Katherine Legge, her jump into the world of NASCAR over the course of this season has come with a steep learning curve, with some on-track incidents and mechanical issues preventing the results from being as prolific as some would have hoped.

It’s taken some time, no doubt, but after picking up more repetitions on the ovals in both the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series, Legge is starting to gain a significant amount of momentum and with that, is coming some better results.

The 44-year-old driver really started to pick up momentum at the Chicago Street Race on Independence Day Weekend, when on Saturday, Legge put on an incredible performance to get herself into the show and bump out Corey Heim, a young prodigy driving for multi-car powerhouse 23XI Racing.

Just getting into the race was a significant hurdle but keeping the No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet (mostly) out of the tire barriers, resulted in a career-best 19th-place finish, and the first top-20 for a woman in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2017 (Danica Patrick).

Then, during one of the biggest weekends of the season, Legge decided to ramp things up a bit, running double-duty at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For the Guildford, England-native, a start in the Brickyard 400 marked just the second oval race for her in the NASCAR Cup Series, and the first since her series debut at Phoenix Raceway earlier this season.

Any potential anxiety from the outcome of Phoenix didn’t weigh heavy on the shoulders of Legge, at all, with the famed road course racer putting down a fantastic performance in the 400-mile contest, bringing the No. 78 Droplight Chevrolet home 17th.

“It felt like a win for us in our small little team,” she added. “We drove our hearts out and the guys did a great job and worked their butts off all race, so I think one or two of them at the end, they ran out of fuel, so I can’t take credit for that, but I passed a couple of cars in Turns 3 and 4 on the restart. It was fun, it was good to make changes through the race, make the car better and feel like I was getting more and more racey as the race went on.”

For Legge, who is just attempting to get as many laps as possible in a stock car, especially the NextGen car, the experience of running a multi-race schedule has been extremely helpful, and since making her series debut in March at Phoenix Raceway, Legge says it’s a world of difference when it comes to her comfort between then and now.

“Definitely a lot more comfortable,” Legge said. “I get more comfortable every time I go out there. I think a lot has been said over the last few months about practice in NASCAR and a lot of people want more, a lot of people don’t, they want to keep the cost down – that’s totally above my paygrade. I just know that I have to use every lap to the best of my advantage.”

“So, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to gain as much experience as I can when I’m out there, but still prove that I belong and that, people have said I should be doing ARCA or Trucks or Xfinity, well, I’m trying to get all of the laps that I can, I’m trying to make all of those laps count as much as possible.”

Dawson Allen, TobyChristie.com

The weekend did not come without its adversity, though, after NASCAR Cup Series practice (originally scheduled for 50 minutes on Friday) was postponed until Saturday and cut in half, leaving the Live Fast Motorsports team to have to scramble to get the car ready with virtually no turnaround between practice and qualifying, which Legge says “hurt [the team] tremendously”.

“We had a few issues, and I didn’t know what those issues were because I don’t know the car well enough to come in and say ‘Oh, it’s definitely this or that’,” Legge said. “So, we rolled into Sunday not knowing whether the car would be good, bad or indifferent, but the guys worked really hard on it. They also had help from other teams, other people outside of us to try and do everything they could to give me the best possible car on Sunday.”

When the race started on Sunday, Legge started at the back of the pack and methodically worked her way up the running order – keeping her cool and not making any mistakes, while others around her continued to do so and fall out of the race.

The strategy calls by David Ingram to keep the No. 78 on the racetrack long during the cycles of green-flag pit stops worked out magnificently and kept Legge on the lead-lap throughout the majority of the event – and when a caution was displayed for inclement weather with four laps to go, got the Live Fast Motorsports driver back on the lead-lap.

Though, there was one thing not going right for Legge: her cool suit was not working.

“I boiled my brains out, because then it rained and so they brought us down pit lane and they had us sat in our car for twenty minutes, which would have been fine had my cool suit been working,” Legge said Tuesday on her podcast Throttle Therapy. “So, there was hot water coursing through my cool suit, which was no longer a cool suit, it was a boiling suit and literally cooking me.”

Legge said that while the field was under the red flag she called a NASCAR official over, pleading to allow her team to give her some cold water or turn a fan towards her while inside the car, so that she wasn’t overheating – saying at times that she felt like she was going to pass out.

When asked if she needed the medical team, Legge declined, saying that there was no way she was putting the window net down and getting out of this car because she wanted to finish the race. Eventually, she got the water and cold air that she needed, and once the track was dry, she, along with the remainder of the field went back to racing.

At the start of two NASCAR Overtime attempts, Legge restarted barely inside the top-20, with some drivers having hit pit road behind her, but made some passes – courtesy of some drivers running out of gas and some passes on the racetrack – to get into the 17th.

Now, one of the most talented women in motorsports, is hopeful that these two impressive runs in lower-budget equipment that she has put together, will attract the attention of more people, so that she can continue to pursue NASCAR.

"I would hope in some small way, if we can keep building on it, there is no point in just having a one-off. I have to keep building and getting better and keep proving that I belong and I’m here to stay, and I have the balls to do this."

Katherine Legge

"I’m very lucky, I’ve got some really great people in my corner that have given me some good advice. So, I will keep working as hard as I can at it and hopefully keep turning people’s heads and keep changing people’s opinions and keep getting opportunities.”

As of now, Legge has two races remaining on her 2025 NASCAR schedule, both in the NASCAR Cup Series at Watkins Glen International (August) and Las Vegas Motor Speedway (October), both in the No. 78 Chevrolet for Live Fast Motorsports.