When Katherine Legge fires her engine this weekend at Phoenix Raceway, she’ll become the 17th woman to start a NASCAR Cup Series race.
The 44-year-old from Guildford, England, boasts a diverse racing resume, including starts in the Indianapolis 500 and wins in IMSA.
Legge will be the first woman to run a Cup event since Danica Patrick made the final start of her NASCAR career in the 2018 Daytona 500.
While Legge and Patrick are the most recent women to reach NASCAR’s top division, the sport’s history of female drivers goes back to the beginning.
On June 19, 1949, Sara Christian competed in the inaugural Cup race at Charlotte Speedway. In a car owned by her husband Frank, Christian started 13th. Bob Flock took over Christian’s No. 71 after his Hudson suffered engine problems early in the race. Christian is credited with a 14th-place finish and will forever be remembered as a participant in the first-ever Cup race.
In the second race, held on July 10, 1949, at the Daytona Beach and Road Course, Ethel Flock made up a quarter of the Flock family in the field. Along with the aforementioned Bob Flock, Tim and Fonty Flock raced alongside Ethel in Daytona Beach. Tim’s runner-up finish was the best of the Flock clan, but Ethel’s 11th was good enough to best her brothers, as Fonty finished 19th and Bob was 22nd.
Louise Smith is another woman who made starts in the early years of NASCAR. From 1949 to 1952, Smith made 11 Cup starts, with a best finish of 16th at the infamously dangerous Langhorne Speedway in 1949.
Over 25 years after NASCAR’s beginnings on the sand of Daytona Beach, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to run a Cup race at a superspeedway. In the 1976 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, she wheeled her No. 68 Chevrolet to a 15th-place finish. One of the 25 drivers she finished ahead of on that sweltering North Carolina day was none other than Dale Earnhardt, who finished 31st in what was just his second start.
In 1977, Guthrie became the first woman to race in the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500 in the same year. 1977 also yielded Guthrie the best finish of her Cup career, as she finished sixth at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Shawna Robinson made waves in the NASCAR world in the late 20th century and early in the 21st century. Robinson was the first woman to win a NASCAR touring series race in 1988, when she won at New Asheville Speedway. Robinson ran eight Cup races between 2001 and 2002, with her final start coming in the 2002 Pepsi 400 at Daytona.
Robinson made most of her NASCAR starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, running 61 events and earning the pole for the 1994 race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
As the 2000s turned into the 2010s, one of most intriguing prospects in NASCAR history was about to start making her way up the ladder. NTT IndyCar Series winner Patrick made her Xfinity debut in the 2010 season opener at Daytona, and two years later, she made her Cup debut in the 2012 Daytona 500.
Her rushed development has been picked apart since her retirement, but there’s no denying the immeasurable impact Patrick had on the sport. She never won a NASCAR race, though if not for a rogue shoe and very poorly timed handling problems, she may have won the 2012 Xfinity race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Patrick never came that close to a win in NASCAR’s national series again, though she did earn seven top-10 finishes at the Cup level.
At Phoenix, Legge will become the latest woman to take the green flag in a Cup race. The trajectory of her career hasn’t exactly followed any of the aforementioned drivers. Her background isn’t exclusively in sportscar racing or open-wheel racing but a mix of both. While her stock car experience is relatively limited, she’s raced on big stages before and won’t be caught like a deer in headlights ahead of her first Cup start.
Regardless of where Legge finishes, she’ll etch her name in history as a woman who reached the pinnacle of stock car racing.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.
At least mike wallace won’t be racing to put her in the wall like he did to Shawna Robinson.
I saw Shawna race in Big Rigs at Cayuga Speedway. She loved to race anything.
last i checked it was 2025…….gender should not be an issue any longer in cup. it takes a lot of backing and talent (well maybe talent, depends on who you are) to make the cup field on any given sunday, male or female. patrick brought money so she bought her ride. stewart/haas needed money and saw the goldmine marketing potential for her remember her getting the pole for the first daytona 500 she ran? as in open wheel he attitude made her unique and nothing was ever her fault.
elton sawyer’s wife, patty moise was an xfinity (busch) series driver. i remember watching her race.
march 8th is international women’s day…..good day for Legge to make the cup field at phoenix.
there are a lot of girls and young women racing in feeder series to nascar.
but in general all series are male worlds, even f1 and indy. heck i remember when women weren’t allowed on pit road.
Wally Dallenbach Jr. married Robin McCall.
Stewart Friesen married Jessica Zemken (Tony Stewart ex?). They race against each other.
It seems most drivers meet their wives and/or girlfriends at the tracks.
I remember the ban on green cars. I guess Ed Howe did away with that on with his 6oIng and 6One cars. 61 and 60! Going and Gone!
I remember Johanna Long, who won the Snowball Derby and ran in the Busch series with Danica. The media would fall all over themselves worshiping Danica when she would finish 12th, while Johanna would finish 14th in a car that had 1/10 of the technical support and financing Danica had.
Would like to see Katherine have some nice solid runs in the Cup car.
Thanks old fan, I was planning on saying the same thing, you saved me some typing. Johanna Long was very talented behind the wheel of a race car. I wish someone would have put her in better equipment.
Johanna deserved better but Nascar didn’t see it that way.
This article is hilarious, there are many women participating in NASCAR right now, including Cup. Just because they keep their purses hidden from the fans doesn’t mean they’re not women…