Kevin Harvick reacts to Katherine Legge Indy finish, places blame on NASCAR teams

Katherine Legge has come a long way since her rocky NASCAR Cup Series debut earlier this year at Phoenix Raceway. Legge made steady progress over her next three starts and in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, she put together her best performance to date.

Legge, driving the No. 78 Chevrolet for Live Fast Motorsports, finished 17th at IMS. She became just the 21st driver to compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400. Kevin Harvick came away super impressed by Legge’s performance, he said on his “Happy Hour” podcast.

“She did great. I’ve been super impressed with the progression of her and her performance,” Harvick said. “I think after the way it started, everybody had a lot of questions of is this just a gimmick. But she continues to get better. I think when you see a finish like this on an oval, we’re going in the right direction. Kudos to her and her team for what they did. … I think the criticism was well deserved and fair. But I also think the kudos are well deserved and fair, too.”

It was indeed impressive from Legge, who started back in 38th but worked her way to the front in Stage 3 through strategy. At one point, she spent time running inside the top five before making her final pit stop.

Katherine Legge impressive of late despite inexperience

Legge now has two finishes inside the top 20 in five Cup starts this season. Keep in mind that when she shows up to the racetrack, it’s her first time inside the Next Gen car on those tracks. Due to NASCAR’s strict testing policy, she is unable to get any practice in ahead of her starts. Harvick blamed the teams for that, calling on NASCAR to loosen up on its testing policy to allow younger and experienced drivers more opportunity to get acclimated.

“Katherine Legge is a prime example of the flaws in our testing system,” Harvick said. “You see how hard it is to develop a Cup driver with how difficult the car is to drive. I’d really like for the rookies and the young drivers to get out on the racetrack more. I know that the teams don’t want to test, and they don’t want to do this. The teams don’t want to do anything. They don’t want to do anything to spend money and that’s a fact. The teams are the biggest holdup in the progression of changing things because of the authority they have through the charter agreements. I think NASCAR would change more things if the teams would agree to do that.

“But the testing policy is another piece of the puzzle that I wish they would adjust a little bit for the rookies and the younger people to have some more of those test sessions. Even if NASCAR says they’re going to have testing sessions at four tracks for whatever days it is, I think that people like Katherine, Riley Herbst, Jesse Love — as different as these cars are to drive compared to [others], even if they took it from the more experienced guys and restructured the testing policy so that it was for the younger drivers to get more developed, I think it would be more beneficial for the sport so it doesn’t take three years to get your Cup driver developed. You’re just doing it by racing and some of them lose their job before they even get started.”