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NASCAR is under fire after allowing British driver Katherine Legge compete in Sunday’s Cup Series race at Phoenix without any experience in the two feeder series’ prior to the race. Legge ultimately wrecked twice in the race, with the second incident taking out fellow driver Daniel Suarez, who was running in the top-10 at the time and competing for a victory.
Legge, 44, is extremely experienced behind the wheel of a race car. She has 19 starts in the IndyCar Series including four in the Indianapolis 500. She’s also a four-time winner in the GT Daytona class of the IMSA SportsCar Championship. So it’s not as if she’s completely out to sea. But Legge had zero experience in anything resembling a NASCAR Cup Series car prior to Sunday’s race.
Prior to the race, Legge, who was competing in largely inferior equipment, said her goal was to complete all the laps and hopefully not affect the outcome of the race. But within just 10 laps of the race starting, she lost control of the car all on her own and spun, bringing out the caution.
She settled in from there. But with 97 laps to go in the race, she attempted to avoid hitting fellow driver Josh Berry as he was lapping her, spinning again and this time coming up to collect Suarez.
“F⸺ lappers, man. Unbelievable,” Suarez said on the radio.
Katherine Legge Speaks Out After Crashing Out Of Debut NASCAR Cup Series Race
“We made some changes to the car overnight and they were awful and I was hanging on the first stint. I was so loose” Legge said after the incident. “…I think there’s a lot of positives to take from it. Obviously there were mistakes made, but I learned so much.”
NASCAR fans proceeded to slam the series for allowing Legge to compete in the race with so little experience.
“I forgot to change my clocks and felt foolish, then I remembered there are people who think Katherine Legge is a cup caliber driver and felt like a genius again,” one fan wrote.
Fans also criticized the series after it allowed four-time Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves into the Daytona 500. Castroneves had never raced in a NASCAR Cup Series car before and crashed out both his qualifying race and the 500.