For more than 20 years, Katherine Legge has competed across a wide range of motorsports, racing in IndyCar, Formula E, DTM, and IMSA sports cars. Few drivers can boast a résumé like hers, but even that wealth of experience couldn’t fully prepare her for what awaited her in NASCAR.
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In a recent interview on The RACER Channel, former driver Paul Tracy asked Legge which series had been the hardest to break into. And NASCAR topped her list. “NASCAR, for sure, by a million percent,” Legge began.
“I’ve never experienced the amount of hate that I got when I first went to NASCAR. I had a policeman posted outside my house at one point because of death threats and all kinds of stuff. People are insane.”
The backlash traces back to April 19, 2025. Legge was driving the No. 53 Chevrolet for Joey Gase Motorsports at Rockingham Speedway. The race was the O’Reilly Auto Parts North Carolina Education Lottery 250. William Sawalich caught her while lapping in Turn 1, and the contact sent Legge spinning. Kasey Kahne, who was making his NASCAR return, had nowhere to go and was collected. Legge completed just 50 of 256 laps and finished 36th.
The crash quickly sparked a wave of online backlash, with Legge disputing that she was at fault. She maintained that she had held her line and that Sawalich entered the corner too hard before understeering into her. But the reaction went far beyond criticism of the incident itself.
Thousands of hostile messages flooded her social media accounts, prompting her team to share some of them publicly. Some told her to hang herself, while others called for her to be assassinated. There were even messages telling her to swallow a shotgun. The threats became serious enough that police protection was arranged outside her home.
Legge addressed the situation at the time. She said criticism of her driving was fair, but threats to her life were not. Despite the abuse, she did not walk away from NASCAR. In July 2025, she finished 19th at the Chicago Street Course, her best Cup result at the time, showing how well her road-racing background could translate to a street circuit. She later followed that up with a 17th-place finish at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the best result of her Cup career.
No Room to Learn for Katherine Legge in NASCAR
What made the situation even harder was Legge’s position as a NASCAR driver. Stock car racing was completely different from anything she had done before. She first raced in NASCAR part-time in 2018, but then had to put those plans on hold for years while she focused on sports cars and IndyCar.
When she returned in 2025, she jumped straight into the Cup Series without much testing or experience in the heavy, low-downforce Next Gen car. Legge was basically learning the tough side of stock car racing on the sport’s biggest stage, with everyone watching.
“When I went to NASCAR, I had to learn all over again, and there was no room given to me for that,” Legge said in the same interview. “They just judged me off my first race, and that was it. I was immediately written off.”
Legge’s Cup Series debut came at Phoenix Raceway in March 2025. That made her the first woman to start a Cup race since Danica Patrick’s 2018 Daytona 500. She spun twice and was involved in a crash that also took out Daniel Suarez. Rockingham came weeks later, but by then, opinions were already set.
Legge told Tracy that sports cars had been the complete opposite experience. She arrived there with an established record and was treated accordingly. NASCAR gave her no such runway.
She also wasn’t arriving in competitive machinery. Her Cup rides came with Live Fast Motorsports, a smaller outfit running the No. 78 Chevrolet. That equipment gap was something she felt throughout the season.
“I mean, we were not competitive, though. I was just out there surviving. But then I wasn’t in Hendrick’s equipment, right?”
Despite all of it, the sport itself was never the problem. “They’re not going to take the joy and the passion that I have from driving a stock car away from me,” Legge added.
In May 2026, she took on a big feat. Legge became the first woman to attempt the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. At Indianapolis, she had saved three laps’ worth of fuel more than the field. She was running comfortably before being caught up in a crash involving Ryan Hunter-Reay’s spinning car. She then traveled straight to Charlotte Motor Speedway for the 600. She finished 31st and completed the race on the track. However, her Double attempt sadly ended at Indianapolis.
Legge told Tracy that the worst of the abuse has since “dissipated.” But the fact that she is willing to talk about it at all is a statement in itself. The police presence outside her home is not a detail she simply glossed over. It is a reminder of what NASCAR cost her just for showing up.