The NASCAR Cup Series approval process was front and center on Saturday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the aftermath of what happened with Katherine Legge last week at Phoenix Raceway.
Legge is a respected and relatively accomplished Sports Car and IndyCar Series veteran with four starts in the Indianapolis 500 but did not fare well in her Cup Series debut and one of two incidents took out an expected playoff contender in Daniel Suarez.
The latter occurred as Josh Berry lapped her BJ McLeod Motorsports car to the outside and the shifting balance sent her sideways. Daniel Suarez had nowhere to go but into Legge.
That generated a lot of conversation over the week with Suarez himself posting a vlog earlier in the week where he said he blamed NASCAR more than Legge due to a lackadaisical approval process to compete at the highest level of Stock Car competition.
Suarez expounded on that sentiment during his media availability on Saturday.
“NASCAR needs a little bit of help to have a better system in place and maybe to get someone who has been in the car recently to make those decisions because it’s not east,” Suarez said. “These cars are quite tricky to drive, especially on an oval.”
Kyle Busch, a two-time champion and one of the modern greats, also called for more Cup Series veterans to be part of the process.
“I feel like I’ve questioned the approval process for a long, long time,” Busch said.
Busch said is more confused than ever on how approval works because he had drivers at the Truck Series team he used to own, full-time competitors at the third highest level, get denied and now drivers with no national touring oval starts are getting approved to race with them.
“So I was very confused, and probably I’m even more confused now on how it all works,” Busch said. I think it’s broken.
“I think there’s a lot of work that could be done to make it better. I also do feel as though it shouldn’t be ‘suit and ties’ making the decisions always. Certainly there can be some that need to be involved, but I do feel like there needs to be fire suits involved in some of those decision-making processes on those that need to be approved or not approved for various activities.”
Busch said the same standard needs to be applied to penalties like the Austin Cindric right rear hook at Circuit of the Americas.
“I don’t think ‘suit and ties’ should be making that decision,” Busch said. “I think you should get penalized by your peers.”
Suarez said that even Helio Castroneves was not ready for the Daytona 500 last month even with a NASCAR approved test session, simulator time and a qualifying race.
“Helio Castroneves, he is one of the best racing drivers I have ever met, and his numbers speak for itself,” Suarez said. “That guy is a rock star and I believe he could not have prepared better for the Daytona 500 … but if you ask me, once he was in the Daytona 500, he still had a lot to learn.
“I tried to talk to him about the basic things before the race. If you ask me if he was 100 percent ready, I don’t think so. This is just different than any other discipline.”
Suarez said road course racing is much different because there is a lot that carries over from that style of racing to the Cup Series version but that oval racing with full bodied cars is just different and needs a different standard.
To wit, Shane Van Gisbergen said he was still subjected to a rigorous approval process prior to his debut on the Chicago Street Circuit in 2023 … a race he went on to win,
He said he, a three-time Supercars champion, had to spend a whole day at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL with Brett Bodine having to prove to the veteran racer that he could drive at this level. He had to turn 40 laps that ‘Monday or Tuesday’ before Bodine formally signed off on the entry.
“For a road course, I think it’s different, but for an oval, I would never have wanted to do what Katherine or others have done and jumped straight in,” Van Gisbergen said. “It’s so difficult and there’s no practice.
“Even now, I wish I had more practice so I feel for her in that situation because it’s always going to be difficult. There should be testing for some rookies for those from outside who want to come in and have a crack because it’s hard.
“You saw what Helio went through, it’s hard, and he went through ARCA and everything. It’s so difficult and jump into these race cars.”
Suarez said that he talked to NASCAR officials that said they recommended Phoenix to Legge because there was nowhere to hide at Martinsville and Bristol. NASCAR has encouraged drivers from other disciplines to crossover for marketing reasons.
“That’s a problem,” Suarez said. “You shouldn’t approve a driver that needs somewhere to hide. That’s not what we want. We don’t want them in the way. We want them to compete. If your mentality is still them on a race track where they can hide, that’s the wrong mentality.”
For what it’s worth, Legge did reach out to Suarez.
“I believe she got set up for failure,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a great driver or a bad driver, if are thrown into one of the most difficult series in the world to be competitive, isn’t fair.
“I was more disappointed in NASCAR than her and I mentioned that to her and I hope she gets other opportunities because I’m from the diversity program and I think having diversity in the sport is very valuable. …
“There is nothing wrong with her, just the process and the process has to be so much better.”
Other takes
Denny Hamlin: “There probably needs to be a stricter process than what it is. Just, you know, and I hate how last week played out because I feel bad for Katherine. I told friends and Kyle Larson at the drivers meeting how impressed I was that she was only a second off in that car, and having never run this kind of series. You get out there in the race and things are different. I just hate it for her. It’s not fair to her that she’s getting the brunt of all this scrutiny but it does open eyes, and should open eyes, that we’re not very strict on who gets to run Cup cars. It shouldn’t be, you should just come in whenever you want. Whether there’s a test, and who pays for that, NASCAR or the teams, because you have to pay for that. I don’t know how this works but you’d certainly want to see it more strict that what it is.”
Chase Elliott: “I haven’t thought a lot about it to be honest. It’s a tough one. I don’t have a well thought out answer. My quick thoughts are that this is the pinnacle of NASCAR. This is supposed to be the very top tier of what NASCAR has to offer within this discipline so I do think we need to make sure everyone is ready to go. I’m not saying that particular situation was or wasn’t. I welcome new drivers, this isn’t me saying I don’t, but I just want everyone geared up and ready to run on Sundays. In the same way that me and everyone else had to go run ARCA races at Daytona right before we ran our first Truck or Xfinity race, so I want to make sure that we’re doing our due diligence there.”
Kyle Larson: “I think in NASCAR, I don’t know what the approval process is, so I can’t really speak on what needs to change. But it is surprising sometimes when some drivers are not allowed to run and then others are. So yeah, I don’t know.. maybe there just needs to be a better something in place. I know when you’re a rookie, you have to go run an ARCA race or you’ve got to build up to the size of the track and stuff like that. So you have to run like three or four races before you can run an Xfinity car or something on an intermediate or superspeedway. So yeah, maybe there needs to be more of that.”
Joey Logano: “I think there’s got to be more structure around it. You know, I think we’re pretty just willy-nilly with it on whether you’ve raced in the last 10 years or not or what did you race? It might be a better question. There’s a balance in here somewhere that what makes sense. But when you look at F1, it’s really like for anyone to get a license to race there, I don’t know if any of us are qualified, nor should we be because we’ve never driven anything like that. Right? I don’t think it’d be right to throw me in an F1 race and without racing one before and giving me 20 minutes of practice. Yeah, I’m going to be in the way because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. The same thing for them though, right? If you’ve never driven a stock car, should you just jump in a Cup car with 20 minutes of practice and line up and race? Eh. There’s a line between entertainment and safety. Not only for that particular driver, but us that race here every week, for the rest of the drivers out there and pit crews that are jumping out in front of these cars, playing in traffic. There’s gotta be a line in there somewhere. A little bit of structure behind it would be nice saying that like, maybe you got to run the Xfinity race or a couple other different types of races. I’m sure they don’t want to put too much structure behind it because every situation is a little bit different, but at the same time, I think there’s got to be some marks you have to hit before you get approved into a Cup race.”
Michael McDowell: “Helio is a world-class race car driver, and he should be approved. I mean, it would be crazy to think that he wouldn’t. Now, does that mean that he has a ton of experience in our cars and is prepared for every single situation and every single dirty air situation and all those things? No. But either was Kyle Larson at the Indy 500, right? There are certain things that, if you don’t do it all the time, you’re just not going to know and you’re not going to have. Mike Wallace, he’s a tremendous speedway racer. Out of all the places that you could run him, you could probably run him there pretty confidently and not think about it. It’s just the amount of experience he has in all the different situations. Casey Mears, I mean, I have no problem with Casey Mears driving. He’s done (489) Cup starts and is a great race car driver. And he’s not that far removed from it. So I don’t think we’ve missed it. I don’t think it’s an issue. But you’re putting a lot on a driver to know all these different aspects in a one-off situation. Same with Katherine (Legge), too. She’s a world-class race car driver. Driven all over the world in all different types of race cars. I don’t feel like she’s underqualified. But she doesn’t have the experience, situationally, in our cars. And I don’t know how much racing would — if she did an Xfinity race at Phoenix, I don’t know if that would change anything.”
