One of the more unfortunate side-effects of the “Indycar” unification was that Katherine Legge lost her ride. For those who didn’t follow this young Brit, Legge lit up American open-wheel racing three years ago by nearly winning the former Toyota Atlantic Championship, subsequently migrating to the Champcar Series during the run-up to “Danica Mania.” Although both Legge and Patrick ran in the Atlantic Series, Katherine’s single-year campaign offered better pace across-the-board, and produced more impressive results (three victories, five podiums, 3rd overall in Championship as a rookie, first woman to win major open wheel race, RACER magazines’ most promising racer, voted by fans around the world, Win in Long Beach voted Southern California’s top 2005 racing moment of the year, BBS Rising Star award winner.)
As a result, when she moved to PKV’s Champcar operation in 2006, it looked like Katherine was going to be able to mount a serious challenge for the “first women in open-wheel” marketing moniker, but things didn’t work out that way. From the jump there were money problems, and subsequently she was shopped out to Dale Coyne’s operation for the 2007 season, where the money problems continued to compound. Regardless, her 2006/7 seasons were impressive (first female to compete full time in the CCWS, first female to lead a Champ Car race, 8th position in Long Beach, 6th place in first oval race at Milwaukee Mile, five top 10 finishes, awarded the Lord Wakefield Trophy by RAC MSA (BWRDC) for outstanding services or performances to the sport, Speed TV Performance Award for the ‘Biggest Hit’).
Somewhere between the end of the 2007 season and unification, Katherine got shunted out of the picture, and she ultimately took a 2008 ride with the Audi DTM factory team. As she pointed out on reflection, “…given the way open-wheel racing (was developing), it may (have been) the right decision.” Nonetheless, hustling a touring car is a considerable change (even though DTM cars are about as high-tech as one can get), and her run at this year’s first event at Mugello was dissapointing, ” We didn’t have a particularly good race. We fought hard, but for some reason we keep losing too much time. That was the case in qualifying as well as throughout race Sunday. We’re struggling with massive oversteer. We need to take our time and carefully analyse the situation. We’re still simply lacking experience.”
Regardless, Legge will no doubt rebound once she gets her racing feet under her, because this kid is the real deal. Hopefully, we’ll see her in US open-wheel again soon unless, of course, Honda F1 or Williams want to put her in an F1 car, now that would be something to see.
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