Legge Gets Monkey Off Her Back With Solid Chicago Outing

Katherine Legge (78) fends off Austin Cindric Sunday at the Chicago Street Course. (Nigel Kinrade/NKP photo)

CHICAGO – Katherine Legge earned a career-best 19th-place finish in the NASCAR Cup Series in Sunday’s Chicago Street Race, the best finish by a female in the series since Danica Patrick at Texas Motor Speedway in 2017.

The weekend started off great for Legge, as she qualified in on Saturday, knocking Corey Heim and 23XI Racing out of the race by just .138 seconds in a surprising David vs. Goliath-style upset.

Legge started the race in 33rd in her No. 78 e.l.f. Cosmetics Chevrolet for Live Fast Motorsports, and despite a spin into the turn-one tire barriers on lap 40, still rallied for the top 20 effort.

Not only was Chicago Legge’s career-best finish, but it ties the best finish for Live Fast Motorsports outside of drafting tracks in the team’s Cup Series tenure. They also finished 19th in the 2022 Coca-Cola 600 with driver and team co-owner B.J. McLeod.

Through multiple starts this year, Legge has continued to show improvement. She made her Cup Series debut at Phoenix (Ariz.) Raceway with the team and finished 30th after a crash. She also competed at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City and finished 32nd.

Legge has made select appearances in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Jordan Anderson Racing as well, but has crashed out in four of her five starts and did not qualify at Rockingham (N.C.) Speedway and Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway.

That meant that a proper finish at Chicago was a big relief to the sports car and open wheel ace.

“It feels pretty good to get that monkey off my back, honestly,” Legge told RACER.com after the race.

A road course veteran, Legge has competed in a variety of series across the world, including testing a Formula One car in 2005 and competing in the Indianapolis 500 four times.

Transitioning more regularly to stock cars has been a much different adventure for her.

“I made a couple of mistakes, but it was good,” Legge said. “I felt pretty racy there at the end, and everyone had damage. It was complete carnage, but it’s just good to get the experience.

“I think it was way more stressful to qualify for it than it was to actually race it, honestly, once you get a few laps under your belt,” she added, referencing the weekend as a whole. “We don’t get much practice, so having to qualify not knowing the car well when all these guys are in it every week, and having to learn the track on the fly – that was the tougher bit. Then I got to chill in the first stage and just find my feet, and then we got racy from the second one on.”

The jump to stock cars is not something completely foreign to Legge, however. She made four starts in the Xfinity Series in 2018, with three coming on road courses and one on an oval at Richmond (Va.) Raceway. She also raced at Road America in the Xfinity Series in 2023 for Bobby Dotter.

She will be competing in the Cup Series again this weekend at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway for Live Fast Motorsports, as well as later in the year at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l.

But Chicago was a positive step in the right direction for her, and it’s one she hopes to build on.

The Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway is set for Sunday, July 13, live at 3:30 p.m. ET on TNT, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.