“I’m the best girl race car driver you’ll ever see.” Katherine Legge wrote as a kid to IndyCar’s Lyn St. James. She’s proved it with four Indy 500 starts, a 2023 women’s qualifying speed record at 231.070 mph, and now the first woman in the Cup since Danica Patrick in 2018. But Katherine Legge’s NASCAR Cup Series debut at Phoenix on March 9, 2025, became a marketing disaster for NASCAR in an instant!
It was hurtful to watch her No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevy spin twice, taking out Daniel Suarez on lap 215, and she finished 30th. It got messy quickly. Legge was devastated by her performance. “It got a lot of negative attention” she revealed about the crash. She’s got 25 years of racing IndyCar, Formula E, and more, but NASCAR threw her in with almost no prep.
Katherine Legge falls victim to NASCAR’s ridiculous rule
NASCAR 2025 format gave her 45 minutes of practice which was up from 25 due to an option tire test but not enough for the Next Gen car. Jordan Bianchi said, “I’m so tired of it… other racing series have all this practice and NASCAR’s like, y’all got 20 minutes?” Jeff Gluck added, “It feels broken… you shouldn’t just show up.” That $1,000,000 cut is killing new drivers like her. Earlier Joe Gibbs Racing also vented about how NASCAR’s $500,000 parts penalty hurt underfunded teams, but slashing practice stings more.
Legge’s full take on the Cup car was logical: “So I’ve been told various different things going into the weekend that it drives like a GT car. It does not. Whoever said that, you’re wrong. It does drive like an Xfinity car or an ARCA car, even, by the way. It’s very unique in the way it drives, and I can only say that from, you know, a few laps at a very specific circuit, being Phoenix… To me, the strange thing was the falling over thing that it does on the exit, which is kind of unsettling, but you get used to it… And it’s weird because if I could go back and do Phoenix again, I absolutely would, and it would be like a whole different ballgame because I would know the car… I struggled at the beginning… it was really sketchy… But we got it better… we got it more comfortable, we got it faster, we were feeling a little bit more racy, I was passing a few people… So, yeah, I’m looking forward to driving the car again.” Legge needed track time, not a simulator rush.
She said after a few laps it got easier and more practice could’ve saved that wreck. X posts slammed the debut, but her grit still kept us rooting. “They all seem to crash into each other a lot,” she summed up the Cup Series chaos. Her struggle yells what’s wrong and she deserves a real shot. Dale Earnhardt Jr. chimed in, “Ain’t going to ruin our business. Katherine Legge’s deal isn’t going to sink NASCAR. The real problem is elsewhere. We’ve got bigger fish to fry than one race going sideways. It’s about the system—practice, support for new drivers, that’s where the fix is needed.” He is already pushing for prep as his Xfinity team gives rookies track time, unlike Cup.
NASCAR updated the changes on December 12, 2024, for the 2025 season. Cup practice jumped to two 25-minute group sessions at Daytona’s Speedweek, up from one 50-minute all-car slot in 2024. Qualifying stayed single-car, two rounds, with Wednesday practice added before Wednesday night qualifying. Xfinity gets two 20-minute practices and a two-round qualifying on Friday, while Trucks get one 20-minute session. But superspeedways like Talladega still look to skip it. It’s a step, but far from the $1,000,000 season-long practice Legge needed at Phoenix.
Criticism hits hard, yet she’s hooked on NASCAR and keen to “silence the doubters” with another shot. NASCAR’s cheap cuts screwed her debut, and we hate it. We need them to fix this as we all deserve better from the racers.
Katherine Legge’s rough Start ignites a fire for NASCAR’s approval process
“The approval process needs to change. I don’t speak on it much, but what happened with Katherine shows it’s off. You can’t toss someone in like that and expect it to work.” Kyle Larson, the 2021 champ, knows the Next Gen car’s quirks inside out. He also believes Legge didn’t get a fair crack at learning them. Her spins prove it’s not about talent; it’s about NASCAR’s lazy system.
He’s spot-on. Legge got 45 minutes of practice barely enough to blink before facing Phoenix’s chaos. Denny Hamlin added, “It should open eyes because NASCAR is like, ‘We are not very strict in who gets to run a Cup car.’ She was really thrown to the wolves.” Hamlin, a 43-race winner, saw her speed in qualifying, but no track time killed her shot. She’s got the skills, just not the support.
Hamlin and Larson are right, this should wake everyone up. We want Legge back, but not like this. NASCAR’s got to fix the rules, give drivers a real chance, or we’re just watching wrecks waiting to happen. We’re done with the excuses for good now.
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