Katherine Legge admits adapting to NASCAR has been a challenge, but the Great Britain native is getting the hang of driving a stock car after her long history driving sports cars like in IMSA.<\/p>\n
At 45 years old, Legge is one of the oldest drivers in the Cup Series this season and an unofficial rookie as well. She\u2019s made six starts in the first 24 races and has had her struggles<\/a><\/strong>. Her best finishes have been\u00a017th in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis and 19th in the Chicago Street Race. As for her four other appearances, she has not finished higher than 30th.<\/p>\n If you think that\u2019s bad, Legge has struggled even more in the Xfinity Series, which is supposed to help prepare a driver for eventually competing in the top tier. She\u2019s made 11 career starts and has failed to finish seven of those times, including failing to finish five of her six Xfinity races this season (four times were due to crashes).<\/p>\n To her credit, however, in Legge\u2019s six starts in the Cup Series this year for Live Fast Motorsports, she\u2019s only failed to finish just once. \u201cThere\u2019s been so many challenges,\u201d Legge said on this week\u2019s edition of the Stacking Pennies podcast with Corey LaJoie.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, the car is very different to everything I\u2019ve driven before. Everything I\u2019ve driven before has a lot of downforce and just is different. This moves around a lot. Very heavy weight transfer. You don\u2019t set the car up in a similar way. So, a lot of the stuff that I\u2019ve learned in sports cars or any car doesn\u2019t translate. It\u2019s almost like a different sport.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there\u2019s the actual driving aspect of it, but then there\u2019s all the auxiliary stuff like even when you go to a track, I\u2019ve never been to most of these tracks, like where is credentials, where do you drive out to pit lane? The choose, the first time I had to do the choose, I was like, \u2018What now? What are we talking about here?\u2019 And so it\u2019s just a lot of new stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Legge\u2019s mind cannot wander in a NASCAR race<\/p>\n The biggest difference and the hardest thing Legge<\/a><\/strong> has had to learn and adapt to is, how in NASCAR, your mind has to be racing at two or three times the speed you\u2019re going in your race car. In other words, you have to constantly be thinking, anticipating, questioning and still find a way to make forward progress around other cars.<\/p>\n