Hailie Deegan landed a multiyear deal with AM Racing to race in the Xfinity Series in 2024, the racing team announced Thursday.
Deegan, 22, is the lone woman competing full-time nationally at the NASCAR level and has spent the past three seasons in the Craftsman Truck Series.
A native of Temecula, Calif., Deegan filled-in for an Xfinity race in 2022 and finished 13th in Las Vegas.
“We are excited to see Hailie continuing to advance her career by running full-time with AM Racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2024,” Mark Rushbrook, global director Ford Performance Motorsports, said in a news release. “Hailie works so hard on and off the track, and AM Racing will surround her with a great team to continue her development. From what we saw from Hailie in her Xfinity Series debut in Las Vegas last year, we look forward to some great results in 2024.”
Deegan doesn’t have a Truck series victory and placed in the Top 10 just five times. But she feels the time is right to move up a level.
“I think the conversations with everybody in the industry selling me (on) I need to get to Xfinity — people that have experienced it, people that have been a part of it, and drivers who are part of this series — so I think that’s something that has gone a long way in reassuring me that like, ‘OK, I think this is really the right step for me and direction of my career,'” Deegan said in the release. “You see a lot of people skip trucks and have success in Xfinity and the Cup Series, so I don’t think it’s something that you have to do, but obviously I’ve done trucks and it’s had its ups and downs. We’ve had some really good moments; we’ve had some really not-so-good moments.”
Deegan had a big moment in 2018 when she won the NAPA Auto Parts Idaho 208 in Meridian, Idaho. It made her the first woman to win a race on the K&N Pro Series level.
Deegan is immensely popular away from the track with more than three million followers on TikTok and 1.4 million on Instagram.
–Field Level Media