Legge gets 'monkey off my back' with top 20 run in Chicago

Katherine Legge became the first woman in eight years to finish inside the top 20 in a NASCAR Cup Series race to cap off a memorable weekend in Chicago for herself and Live Fast Motorsports.

“It feels pretty good to get that monkey off my back, honestly,” Legge told RACER after her 19th-place effort.

She earned her way into the field by qualifying better than Corey Heim and 23XI Racing. There were 41 teams that attempted the third annual Chicago street course event. In the final group of drivers on track, Legge and the No. 78 team knew the mark to beat, and while it wasn’t pretty as she damaged the car by bouncing off a few walls, she qualified 33rd.

“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.”

Sunday was Legge’s third career start in the Cup Series driving for B.J. and Jessica McLeod. The former open-wheel and sports car driver has embraced stock car racing, but her Cup Series tenure got off to a rocky start that left her even more determined to succeed after crashing in her debut at Phoenix Raceway and collecting Daniel Suarez, who was running inside the top 10. Her second start did not come until Mexico City last month.

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Legge has also been running part-time in the Xfinity Series. Sunday, however, was her first NASCAR national series race this season in which she finished on the lead lap. Her average running position in Chicago was also improved from her previous Cup Series starts at 26th.

“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,” Legge said of the weekend. “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 result is another notch in McLeod’s and Live Fast Motorsports’ favor. The organization has nine top-20 finishes in its history (2020 to present), but Chicago was just the second top-20 finish for the team on a non-drafting style racetrack. The other top-20 result was also a 19th-place finish by McLeod, which came in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway two years ago.

Danica Patrick was the last female to compete in a NASCAR Cup Series race before Legge joined McLeod’s team this season. Patrick made 191 starts between 2013 and 2018, and her last top-20 finish was a 17th-place effort at Texas Motor Speedway in 2017.