{"id":48284,"date":"2025-07-30T19:41:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48284\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T19:41:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:41:04","slug":"denny-hamlin-reacts-to-katherine-legge-earning-p17-at-indianapolis-nascar-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48284\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin reacts to Katherine Legge earning P17 at Indianapolis NASCAR race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katherine Legge<\/a> has completely changed the narrative around her time in the NASCAR Cup Series<\/a>. Since making her debut earlier this year at Phoenix Raceway, Legge has made steady progress over her last three starts.<\/p>\n

That was never more evident than during last Sunday\u2019s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. She put together her best performance to date, finishing 17th while driving the No. 78 Chevrolet for Live Fast Motorsports.<\/p>\n

In the process, Legge also became just the 21st driver to compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400. She impressed many, but Denny Hamlin<\/a> specifically had some nice things to say about her on the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental<\/a> podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cVery noteworthy,\u201d Hamlin stated, regarding Legge\u2019s performance<\/a>. \u201cI just feel as though, \u2018Wow, she\u2019s getting a lot out of that car.\u2019 Now, in practice, I would have said, \u2018Whoa, holy cow. Danger, danger, you know, No. 78 car.\u2019 But you know, they don\u2019t have any testing. Probably no data or anything like that. So, when they hit the racetrack for the very first time, who knows where their travels are at? Like, are they hitting the track? Are they not? They\u2019re one of those teams that puts their thumb in the air and it\u2019s like, \u2018I think we need to probably be here this weekend.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 It can\u2019t be stated how impressive she\u2019s been. I mean, staying on the (leap lap). It\u2019s not like she\u2019s getting five lucky dogs, and getting back on the lead lap and squeaking a finish out. Like, she\u2019s staying on the lead lap at these racetracks, and battling some of our better drivers for teens finishing position. That\u2019s with a car that is clearly not up to snuff, compared to what she\u2019s racing up against. \u2026 She optimized her day (at Indianapolis).\u201d<\/p>\n

As Hamlin noted, what Legge is getting out of her equipment is majorly impressive. He\u2019s far from the only one who\u2019s been made a believer in her talents, as Kevin Harvick<\/a> also waxed poetic about Legge\u2019s on his Kevin Harvick\u2019s Happy Hour<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe did great. I\u2019ve been super impressed with the progression of her and her performance,\u201d Harvick said<\/a>. \u201cI think after the way it started, everybody had a lot of questions of is this just a gimmick. But she continues to get better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when you see a finish like this on an oval, we\u2019re going in the right direction. Kudos to her and her team for what they did. \u2026 I think the criticism was well deserved and fair. But I also think the kudos are well deserved and fair, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

All told, Katherine Legge is improving each time she gets behind the wheel in the Cup Series. She\u2019s certainly proving she can handle the rigors of NASCAR\u2019s top competition, and moving forward she\u2019ll be a fascinating driver to keep an eye on whenever she\u2019s on the track.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014 On3\u2019s Nick Geddes contributed to this article.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katherine Legge has completely changed the narrative around her time in the NASCAR Cup Series. Since making her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[425,99],"class_list":["post-48284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}