Grand Prix of Long Beach: Katherine Legge is driving progress — on and off the race track

Katherine Legge accelerates, and her world calms.

Outside the car, it’s a cacophony of screeching tires, popping exhaust, clattering tools, cheering fans. Besides driving, Legge has myriad other responsibilities: Talking to sponsors. Prepping with the team. Reviewing data. Analyzing her competitors.

Analyzing herself.

But despite the fortissimo of her career, when she’s in the cockpit and the car lurches forward, it all disappears. It’s zen.

Legge, 43, has been racing professionally for some two decades now. If it has four wheels, Legge says with a laugh, she’s raced it.

The British driver was in Long Beach last week for an annual press event for the upcoming Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the event, she says, that springboarded her racing career.

Legge then jetted off to Indianapolis for open testing on the Motor Speedway oval for the still-upcoming Indy 500.

But she will return to Long Beach this week.

That’s because the city, along with the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, is set to honor Legge and Takuma Sato, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and the first Japanese driver to win the race, with inductions into the Motorsports Walk of Fame on Thursday, April 18. The induction ceremony will kick off the Grand Prix of Long Beach festivities.

Legge — who became the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America when she took the checkered flag at Long Beach in 2005 in her first career start in the Atlantic Championship Series — will be the first woman inducted into the Motorsports Walk of Fame.

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Related: Here’s what’s happening, and when, during the 2024 Grand Prix of Long Beach

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“I’m very fortunate,” she says, “that I’ve been able to do all the things that I’ve been able to do and drive all the cars that I’ve been able to race.

“I’ve been around for a long time now, which I think is a really cool testament to all the people who have supported me and the work that we’ve put in,” Legge adds, “and hopefully, I can now start giving back to the next generation, too.”

A self-described “bit of a tomboy,” Legge grew up racing go-karts in England. It was exciting and competitive, something she could do with her dad — and she quickly fell in love.

She knew she wanted to be a race car driver. But it’s an expensive sport, Legge says, and her family didn’t really have the money then or the knowledge of how to break into the industry. But she had passion. So she kept pushing, working her way up through the ranks, mainly in North America.

Legge has had one of the most diverse careers in motorsports. She’s competed in NASCAR and Formula E, an electric open-wheel series. She’s raced sports cars and champ cars.

She’s competed three times in the Indy 500 already (only the ninth woman to qualify for that famous race), was the second woman to be offered a Formula One test and boasts three championships and six wins in her racing career.

“All those achievements are remarkable — not just for a woman, but for anybody,” says Jim Michaelian, the president and CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach. “But what she’s been able to accomplish off the track and out of the car is equally significant.”

The association, which partners with the city for the Motorsports Walk of Fame, had been in search of “a deserving female driver for years,” Michaelian says.

Yes, Legge has a history with Long Beach. And yes, she’s got the laundry list of racing accomplishments.

But she was picked not just because of her exploits on the track, Michaelian says, but also because of how she has worked to propel other young women in the sport, giving them opportunities she might not have had coming up.

Legge says she’s seen an increase in women around the track — even as fans — as her career has progressed. And it’s only a matter of time, she says, until even more women are present as drivers, as mechanics, as spectators.

“There will be more — there are more — women in racing,” Legge says defiantly.

Since the first time she sat behind a wheel, Legge has loved racing. It’s the competition, with others and yourself, that hooked her, she says.

“I was fortunate that I found something that I loved,” she says. “A lot of people go through life not knowing what they want to be when they grow up, and I found something that I was obsessed with from a very early age.”

Sure, there have been sacrifices — including sleep — but she doesn’t look at her career that way.

“You don’t see them as sacrifices but just on the path of doing what you want to do,” she says. “I’ve led this very weird life, very unusual life; it’s not been normal at all. I don’t know what it’s like out there in the normal world.”

She has a point about her career lacking stability.

Ten days before the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, set for Saturday, April 20, team Gradient Racing announced it was moving up Stevan McAleer to compete in Long Beach, taking Legge’s spot. McAleer will be Sheena Monk’s “full season teammate from the Long Beach Grand Prix onwards in their 2024 campaign,” the race team said on social media.

But the day before, other news about Legge’s career broke: Dale Coyne Racing signed Legge to compete for the Indy 500, which is on May 26. If she qualifies, it will be her fourth start at the race; she made it last year — and she set the record for fastest qualifying times for a woman.

.@elfcosmetics has entered the chat.

: #Indy500 Open Test – Peacock#INDYCAR // @katherinelegge pic.twitter.com/xJ5AGnPskg

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) April 10, 2024

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And what’s more, Legge will drive a bubblegum pink, rose and gray car sponsored by e.l.f. Cosmetics, the first beauty brand to serve as a primary sponsor of an Indy 500 entry, according to DCR.

“Katherine is a bold disrupter with a kind heart,” says Kory Marchisotto, the chief marketing officer of e.l.f. Beauty. “She is a force driven by positivity, inclusivity and accessibility. She takes to the track motivated to pave the way for future drivers who might not currently see themselves behind the wheel at big races.

“Her presence is helping to shape the future culture of racing.”

Sure, the Indy 500 is dubbed the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. But it’s Long Beach, the “200-mph beach party,” that is her favorite course, Legge says.

And while that might be easy for Legge to say while sitting beneath the shade of a tent on a warm April morning last week — with her every word accented by the whirring of cars being tested and showcased on the 1.97-mile Long Beach street circuit — she seems genuinely sincere about the pick.

The course is a challenge. The walls block drivers’ ability to see around the corners. It’s on the street.

“There’s no room for errors,” Legge says. “It’s bumpy, it’s brutal.”

And it’s what put her career on the map.

Coming later this week

Thursday: We hop in the car with several female drivers competing in various events this weekend, including Samantha Tan (GT America), to talk about their careers and how they became race car drivers.

Friday: It takes a lot to put on a grand prix — and to get the racing teams prepped for it. We go behind the scenes with some of the women who pull off an event fans will love.

Saturday: It’s not just drivers, but also the engineers and mechanics who make the winning cars successful, like Grace Hackenberg with Arrow McLaren and Shelby Crackston with Team RTR, who, for example, is working around the clock to build a new wiring harness for an engine from scratch after the drift racing car caught on fire during the annual press event for the Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Sunday: Yes, women are fans of fast cars and racing and competitions, too, and we catch up with some of those who came out to the Grand Prix of Long Beach to watch their favorite drivers vie for a podium.

Source: Orange County Register