{"id":89609,"date":"2023-02-14T10:42:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T18:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=89609"},"modified":"2023-02-14T10:42:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T18:42:57","slug":"katherine-legge-returns-to-the-indianapolis-500-with-honda-and-rahal-letterman-lanigan-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/katherine-legge-returns-to-the-indianapolis-500-with-honda-and-rahal-letterman-lanigan-racing\/","title":{"rendered":"Katherine Legge Returns to the Indianapolis 500 with Honda and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Katherine Legge\u2019s American open-wheel career started with a test for women on Texas Motor Speedway\u2019s 1.5-mile banked oval back in November of 2004. Morris Nunn\u2019s wife, Kathryn, had called upon a group of women, together with Lyn St James, to audition for a probable Indy Lights ride the following year. Legge wasn\u2019t invited but she showed up and was quick from the get-go, even though she\u2019d never seen, much less driven an oval before.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Legge had never seen, much less driven on an oval, but was exceptionally quick at Texas Motor Speedway in an Indy Lights test, November 2004 – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To say she opened a few eyes would be modest, but success for a quick woman in open wheel racing, either here in the United States or anywhere in the world, isn\u2019t anywhere near the access available to boys and men. Katherine has persevered at her craft. She raced with Polestar Racing Group in the Atlantic Championship in 2005, earning three victories and third place in the final standings. She was the first woman to earn victory in professional American open wheel racing.<\/p>\n

A year later she was racing with PKV Racing in the Champ Car World Series, a much more difficult class of motor sport, and was 16th at the close. Legge\u2019s monumental accident at Road America that year didn\u2019t hold her back; the same evening she went to that year\u2019s Atlantic Championship prize giving. In 2007 she went to Dale Coyne Racing. It was the first year – and essentially the only year – of the Panoz DP01 race car and Katherine Legge had a good, 15th place finish in the final results.<\/p>\n

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Legge, before her 2006 Champ Car accident at Road America – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The market for Katherine Legge pretty much dried up after that, so she went back to the Continent and had success in DTM with Audi, also racing in A1 Grand Prix and with Amlin Aguri in Formula E. Her Formula E competition occurred after she was racing – again – in the states with INDYCAR.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Katherine Legge brought TrueCar sponsorship to Dragon Racing in 2012, when they started the season using the rightly maligned Lotus power plant, later swapping to Chevrolet power at Indianapolis. She was 22nd in that year\u2019s Indianapolis 500 and only completed a partial season, with a 26th place result. In 2013 she ran Indy only for Schmidt Peterson Hamilton HP Motorsports, finishing 26th.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the extent of Katherine Legge\u2019s open wheel career until this year., despite her 39 ChampCar\/INDYCAR starts and a pair of sixth place results\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime she\u2019s been a regular competitor in IMSA\u2019s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, helping to bring Don Panoz\u2019s DeltaWing to that series for three years (2014-2016), then moving to Michael Shank Racing for three years, the first in DPi prototypes and the balance in GTD sports cars with Acura NSX GT3 race cars. In 2019 she hooked up with Heinricher Racing with Meyer Shank Racing and has been competing in GTD ever since, including this year in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, where she took Racers Edge Motorsports with WTR\u2019s Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 to a fourth place in class result.<\/p>\n

\"Katherine
Katherine Legge helped Gradient Racing earn a fourth place GTD result in this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year, though, Katherine Legge will attempt to earn her third start in the Indianapolis 500, racing with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR), driving the No. 44 Honda-powered Dallara. The team announced sponsorship from Hendrickson, a manufacturer and supplier of suspension systems and components for commercial transportation needs for Legge\u2019s third attempt at Indy in the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Hendrickson has been an associate sponsor at RLLR since 2019; the company became primary sponsor of Christian Lundgaard\u2019s Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course entry in the Honda Indy 200 last season; he finished 11th in that race.<\/p>\n

This association with Legge marks Hendrickson\u2019s second time as a primary sponsor in a racing event, and they\u2019ve chosen the largest stage in the world to show their wares. \u201cI am thrilled to be back at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing for the biggest race in the world, the Indy 500,\u201d Legge stated. \u201cBobby gave me my first chance to win races for the team in the Jaguar I-PACE series a few years ago, and it feels like a homecoming of sorts to be back with the team, especially seeing as I\u2019m also very proud to be back with HPD in IMSA, and now in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Legge in her Rookie Orientation Program test in 2012 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cRacing at Indy with an Indy 500-winning team and with Honda is an amazing opportunity and one I am very grateful for and intend to make the most of,\u201d she declared. \u201cI\u2019m hoping I can learn from my teammates (Lundgaard, Jack Harvey, Graham Rahal) and team members, and transition smoothly back to open wheel racing for May. I can\u2019t wait to get to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobby Rahal, co-owner of RLLR said he\u2019d made more than a few attempts to put Legge back in an Indy car. \u201cI\u2019m happy to announce that Katherine will join us in our Hendrickson Honda for the 107th running of the Indy 500. I\u2019ve been a fan of Katherine\u2019s for many years and know that, in the right situation, she can be competitive and figure into the outcome at the end of the race. She has driven for us before, in the Jaguar electric program, and won from pole in Mexico City, finishing on the podium several times,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to have her back with us to work together at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first time. I know she looks at this as a chance to show everybody what she really can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The INDYCAR SERIES starts its 17-race schedule at St. Petersburg, Fla. the first Sunday in March. Practice for the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 begins May 18th, with the race scheduled for May 28th.<\/p>\n

\n

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Katherine Legge will attempt to qualify for her third Indianapolis 500 this May, working with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":89610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,5029],"tags":[9553,955,9551,9155,9552,9297,352,674,9294],"class_list":["post-89609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-racing","tag-atlantic-championship-imsa","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-katherine-legge","tag-ntt-indycar-series","tag-polestar-racing-group","tag-rahal-letterman-lanigan-racing","tag-road-america","tag-texas-motor-speedway","tag-weathertech-sportscar-championship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Katherine-Legges-No.-44-RLLR-Honda-min-e1676400087332.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-njj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89609"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89639,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89609\/revisions\/89639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}