Katherine Legge takes next step in NASCAR career with Cup debut at Phoenix

Legge joins an exclusive list of women who have competed in the NASCAR Cup Series when she takes the green flag this upcoming Sunday.

Katherine Legge — a name many have seen across various racing paddocks over the years, particularly as a veteran sports car and IndyCar driver — will make her NASCAR Cup Series debut at Phoenix Raceway this weekend. The 44-year-old becomes just the 17th woman to ever compete at the highest level of stock car racing, and the first since Danica Patrick, who made her final start in the 2018 Daytona 500. She will also be the first woman born outside of the United States to compete in the Cup Series since 1977.

Legge's experience in stock cars is limited, making four Xfinity starts in 2018 and a fifth last year, finishing as high as 14th at Road America. She also made her ARCA debut earlier this year at Daytona, starting ninth before being collected in an early wreck and failing to finish.

She may be a rookie behind the wheel of a NASCAR stock car, but her racing resume is deep. She has 47 IndyCar starts including four in the Indianapolis 500. She also has nearly 100 starts in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series, featuring in a dozen Rolex 24 Hour races at Daytona with a runner-up finish in her class in 2018. She also has four class victories, all coming as the driver of an Acura NSX GT3 in the GTD class. She even ran a couple Formula E races back in 2014. Of note, she was the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in America when she took the checkered flag in a Toyota Atlantic Series race in 2005.

The British racing driver has even quite recently expressed a desire to get more involved in NASCAR and this is the next step to doing that. Some have suggested she could become the first woman to complete the Indy 500/Coke 600 double. But as of this writing, no plans for that endeavor are in place.

Katherine Legge, SS-Green Light Racing, Blast Equality Collab Chevrolet Camaro

Photo by: Jared East / NKP / Motorsport Images

A big part of her racing journey has been trying different kinds of tracks, and Phoenix is especially unique among ovals in NASCAR thanks to its wild dogleg along the front stretch, which allows the field to fan out and use most of the apron, even in the corners. She'll get firsthand experience with it this weekend piloting the No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet with sponsorship from DROPLiGHT. The team, which has been around since 2020, currently runs a partial schedule in the NASCAR Cup Series. They failed to make this year's Daytona 500, but ran the Atlanta race with team owner B.J. McLeod behind the wheel.

Among other women who have competed in the Cup Series, Patrick has the most starts of any female driver in the sport's history, running 191 races. However, it was Sara Christian in NASCAR's inaugural season (1949) who earned the best finish with a fifth-place finish in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.