Katherine Legge on NASCAR Cup Series deubt: ‘This 100 percent is my identity’

AVONDALE, Ariz. — Katherine Legge doesn’t view her racing as the first woman in the NASCAR Cup Series in more than seven years as something to take pride in doing.

“It’s disappointing that there aren’t more women [in] INDYCAR, NASCAR Cup, sports cars,” Legge said Friday, a day prior to her first time in a Cup car for practice at Phoenix Raceway.

It will be a somewhat historical moment as Legge, driving for Live Fast Motorsports, is the first female to drive NASCAR’s current Next Gen car and only the eighth woman to compete in Cup’s modern era.

“Everybody says, ‘What’s it like to be a girl in racing?’” Legge said. “And I don’t know, because I only have my own experience. I don’t know what it’s like to be a boy in racing.

“So I know what my journey has been, and I know that it’s gone for me and it’s gone against me, and I know where the struggles are. And I know mentally what you have to do to overcome those struggles.”

The 44-year-old Legge has an extensive racing resume that includes 47 starts in top open-wheel cars and nearly 100 starts (including four wins) in top road-racing series. She has competed in everything from electric cars in Formula E to midget cars at the Chili Bowl. Legge has made five career Xfinity starts and will make her Cup debut Sunday.

“I’ve driven so many different forms of racing,” Legge said. “I feel like this is the one that I really wanted to do that’s eluded me. I just love it. It’s in my blood.

“You know how they say that your job should not be your identity? Well, this 100 percent is my identity. I am just a racing driver.”

The Cup debut will cap a whirlwind two weeks for Legge, who met with NASCAR officials two weeks ago at Atlanta Motor Speedway to find out what she would need to get a license to race in Cup. She was approved for road courses and tracks one mile and shorter. While last week at Circuit of the Americas would have made more sense considering her road-course experience, she and the Live Fast team didn’t have time to get ready in a week.

So she’s had a little less than two weeks to prepare for the Cup debut. She has driven simulators at Richard Childress Racing (a static simulator) and Chevrolet (a motion simulator where the seat moves). She drove a car during Hendrick Motorsports pit stop practice this week just to get used to how a Cup car stops and launches.

“I feel like I’m either going to sink or swim, but everybody’s given me the best possible opportunity to go out there and do a good job,” Legge said. 

Legge hopes to compete in more Cup events, and she said she hasn’t ruled out INDYCAR starts.

“I would say I’m hopeful to do more INDYCAR races,” Legge said.

The Indianapolis 500?

“I would love to,” she said. “Let’s see.”

Legge said the scramble to get in a Cup race had nothing to do with Women’s History Month and all about racing at Phoenix, which the team felt would be a better track for her to debut at rather than the smaller Martinsville and Bristol tracks coming up in the next several weeks.

“[I was hoping to] fly under the radar for my first Cup race. Nobody’s going to notice, I’m just being in the back, we’ll chill, we’ll get NASCAR permission [to do more],” Legge said. “And then somebody was like, ‘You know it’s International Women’s Day.’

“Oh, s—. No way I’m flying under the radar [was my response]. So, no, I did not take that into consideration.”

When she’s done racing, Legge does want to have an influence on increasing the number of girls and women competing in motorsports. In recent years, NHRA drag racing has been the most prominent form of motorsports where women have had consistent success. She will be the first woman to compete in a Cup race since Danica Patrick in the 2018 Daytona 500.

“There’s been kind of a gap. There was Sarah Fisher and Danica [Patrick] and me and Simona [de Silvestro] and a bunch of good drivers in that era. And then there’s been like this gap and this lull,” Legge said about the women in the top racing series across various forms of motorsports.

“When I stop racing, … I’d love to bring up the next generation because I think that there’s only a handful of us that have those shared, lived experiences, and I think that my experience might be valuable in helping them navigate it.”

Her experience has allowed her to know that the questions about women in racing come with the territory.

“To me, it just is,” Legge said. “I would much rather people just saw me as another racecar driver on merit. But that’s not reality, and I’m not immune to or blind to the fact that it has helped me in ways, too. 

“So I’m just going to go out there and be Katherine and do the very best that I can.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.