Legge Upsets Heim Time To Make Chicago Street Race

Katherine Legge (left) on pit lane at the Chicago Street Course. (Nigel Kinrade/NKP photo)

CHICAGO – Open wheel and sports car ace Katherine Legge stopped the stock-car world’s proverbial clock Saturday to make the NASCAR Cup Series field for the Chicago Street Race in a major upset.

Driving for B.J. McLeod’s Team Live Fast, a tiny, underfunded team by comparison to the Cup Series giants, Legge kept NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series standout and top prospect Corey Heim out of the Grant Park 165 starting grid with a gutsy qualifying effort.

Wheeling a No. 78 e.l.f. Cosmetics Chevrolet with a bent toe link due to multiple scrapes with the concrete barriers, Legge still found a time of one minute, 32.368 seconds (85.744 mph) on her last of three qualifying laps around the 2.2-mile, 12-turn temporary circuit.

It was enough to edge out Heim’s time of 1:32.506 (85.616 mph) by .138 seconds and lock her in as the last of four open, non-chartered teams to make Sunday’s race.

Considering Heim was driving a fourth Toyota for 23XI Racing – the team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan – it was a David beats Goliath moment for Legge and McLeod.

“I tried my best to mess that qualifying [session] up! (laughter) It’s a lot of pressure to come in with only 20 minutes of practice on a street course, where there’s no room for error, and to have to put it in the show. But I actually feel pretty good about it now,” said Legge. “We would have been a lot faster, I think, had I not kept nicking the wall. I’ve given my crew a lot of work to do from that, but we had to keep pushing to put it in the show.

“I’m really proud of this team, and I’m very much looking forward to race day.”

Knowing he had to put his No. 67 Robinhood Camry XSE on the edge in order to qualify in, Heim tagged the wall similarly to Legge, though he went out in the first 20-minute group for time trials.

After a rough first lap, Heim went out again and – despite damage from the incident – improved his lap to the mid-92 second bracket. The improvement just didn’t turn out to be enough in the end.

The 23-year-old from Marietta, Ga., who celebrated his birthday Saturday and carries the nickname ‘Heim Time’ in the Truck Series, became the 1,262nd driver in Cup Series history to fail to qualify for a points race and the first Cup Series DNQ outside of the Daytona 500 since 2018.

Heim took responsibility for the DNQ in a statement posted to social media after qualifying was over.

“[I] made a mistake on my first lap and bent the toe link. Tried to get everything I could out of it after that, but [it] clearly wasn’t enough,” Heim wrote. “That’s completely my fault and [I’m] still trying to process all of it.

“Thank you [to] 23XI Racing for a car plenty capable enough to make the race.”

Legge will become the first female to start the Chicago Street Race when she takes the green flag Sunday, and even though she’s made the field for the Indianapolis 500 four times in her career, she admitted she was more nervous going into qualifying in the Windy City Saturday.

“B.J. [McLeod] actually said to me, ‘This can’t be any more stressful than qualifying for Indy, right?’ And I feel like it actually is, because there’s a level of comfort with Indy that I know where I’m going and what I’m doing. Here it’s very much drinking from a fire hose, just trying to find my feet and get better.

“The only way you can get better is with laps, and we don’t have a lot of practice here, so you have to get better in the race … and to do that I have to put it in the show,” she added. “It’s this vicious circle, but I really, really appreciate everyone’s support because it’s been a hell of a year … and thankfully, this one worked out in our favor.”

After crashing out of four of her five NASCAR Xfinity Series starts this season, plus failing to qualify for a sixth race, Legge hopes her Sunday can be quiet and uneventful – and that she can finally see a checkered flag without and issues along the way.

“We just want to make it to the end!” she said. “That’s goal number one.”

Broadcast coverage of Sunday’s Grant Park 165 airs at 2 p.m. ET, live on TNT Sports, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90, with in-car cameras streaming on MAX and an alt-cast of the race available on TruTV.