Hailie Deegan recently joined Kenny Wallace on his YouTube channel to explain why she decided to leave NASCAR for the Indy NXT series.
Hailie Deegan via Hailie Deegan YouTube
Deegan announced on Instagram that she was joining HMD Motorsports and will be driving the No. 38 car in the Indy NXT series on October 14th on Instagram.
She wrote, “It’s been hard keeping this one a secret… Beyond excited to announce that I’ll be racing Indy NXT with HMD Motorsports in 2025. I can’t wait for this new venture on this side of motorsports. Time to get to work!”
View this post on Instagram
Deegan’s announcement came in the wake of NASCAR Xfinity series team AM Racing parting ways with Deegan in July. The team announced on X, “AM Racing and Hailie Deegan have decided to part ways, effective immediately. We are grateful for Hailie’s contributions and dedication as the driver of the No. 15 Ford Mustang during her time with the race team.”
The team concluded, “We wish Hailie the best in her future endeavors and look forward to her continued success on and off the track.”
— AM Racing (@AMRacingNASCAR) July 8, 2024
Speaking with Kenny Wallace, Deegan explained that she thought about returning to the NASCAR Truck Series, but after a conversation with her dad, Brian Deegan, she realized that her future did not have to be at NASCAR.
She told Wallace, “I could have gone back to Trucks. That wasn’t out of the equation. I have enough sponsor money to go do that. But I wanted something, what’s going to keep me in racing for the next 10 years. I want a career out of this.”
“And even my Dad, he talked to me on the phone, and he was like, ‘It doesn’t have to be NASCAR.’ And like I just don’t think I ever thought differently to where I was like, ‘Oh, it has to be NASCAR. I’m not thinking about anything else.’ And that’s when we were sitting on the couch, me and Chase [Cabre] and he’s like, ‘What about Indy Car?’ And he’s like, ‘You love road course racing. You always do good on mile and a half tracks. You did good in the IMSA stuff.’ And he’s like, ‘Why not Indy, the open wheel side of things?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know that’s so different.’
Deegan continued, “And so that’s why I did that F3 test was to try it out. That was the decision maker of like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this or I’m not.'”
Hailie Deegan via Hailie Deegan YouTube
Earlier in the interview, Deegan also noted that NASCAR’s “gruesome” schedule played a role in her choice as well.
She said, “That was another selling for me on the Indy side. I’m going to have time to work on myself throughout the year because there’s only 14 races throughout the whole season. It’s a little bit tighter, doesn’t start ’til March ends in the end of August, I believe.”
Hailie Deegan via Hailie Deegan YouTube
“And then something else with that is the testing,” she said. “This is such a huge point for me. I am a slow learner, but I can figure it out. And I’ve always been like that in racing. I’m not the one going to go out there set quick time lap one might junk this thing. I’m not like that. I don’t like being that. I like building up to stuff.”
She then compared how much practice time she will get with Indy NXT compared to the Trucks and Xfinity series, “My first year of trucks I got no practice. My second year of trucks, we got the 15 to 25 minute practice. Let’s rough it at 20 minutes. There’s some tracks at like Atlanta you get no practice. Super speedways no practice. And then there’s like 55 minutes on road courses. So that’s tall each out to still about 20 minutes. And I will have more seat time off just the test days like the usable track time in the Indy NXT series than I did in practice my whole Truck and Xfinity career before the season even starts.”
Hailie Deegan via Hailie Deegan YouTube
What do you make of Deegan’s reasoning to leave NASCAR for Indy?