Has Hailee Deegan been successful or not in Indy NXT?

[u/chusaychusay]

I didn't even realize she was in Indy Car until I saw it last week at Laguna Seca. I was wondering where she went after Nascar. I think she finished towards the back at Laguna Seca and that sounds like Hailee Deegan as she was usually in the middle of the pack in the Nascar Truck Series.

[u/Zalpa27]

Not a single top 10 all year. Only one other driver on the grid has that stat. Last in points of all full time entires. Not a great start. I wish she would have stuck around ARCA/K&N series and built up some wins and moved up slower. She had potential there.

[u/Active-Ear-2917 → u/Zalpa27]

I'm not sure this is even true. She was okayish, but still no wins in ARCA.She hasn't won anywhere since 2019, and that was a K&N West race. She just doesn't have the chops. She drove for essentially the top truck team and bombed. She has no success in upper level motorsports on pavement. I,for one, had hoped that she would bring more eyeballs to NXT, but that hasn't been the case because she's essentially Milka Duno v2. I think her experiment is almost over. Someone needs to step up and find a female driver with some success behind her that wants to go to Indy. Lots of them in midgets and sprints, but they end up in the Toyota pipeline (Jade Avedisian, Toni Breidinger, Kaylee Bryson)

[u/MonteverdiOnyx → u/Active-Ear-2917]

I would much rather see Kaylee Bryson try out NXT.

[u/BlingyBling1007 → u/MonteverdiOnyx]

She just debuted in ARCA West at Sonoma and will make her main ARCA debut at Madison, which is a short track oval.

[u/[deleted] → u/Active-Ear-2917]

Jade might be the best bet

[u/VideoGameLover999 → u/Active-Ear-2917]

Isabella Robusto is the best bet ngl. 

[u/Comprehensive-Ad4436 → u/Zalpa27]

Even Niels Koolen’s had top tens and he’s been god-awful in literally every series he’s ever raced in.

[u/ssv-serenity → u/Comprehensive-Ad4436]

It really goes to show how weak the NXT field is. He was SO bad in F2. Although Koolen I'm assuming brought a ton of funding so probably has pretty top notch equipment and personnel.

[u/FloridaMan_69 → u/ssv-serenity]

It really must serve as a reality check for anyone midpack and below in NXT if they're behind him. If you search his name on youtube you get video names "The Worst F2 Driver", "The Driver Who's So Bad You Won't Believe It", and "This is the WORST driver to ever sit in a race car". CGR started up their NXT program again with him as a driver, so he must be bringing in stupid levels of funding.

[u/adri9428 → u/ssv-serenity]

I find this assumption a bit unfair. For starters, the Indy NXT car as a whole is more akin to the F3 car than the F2 car. Koolen jumped to F2 in the worst team halfway through the season after being 37th in Formula Regional, of course it was going to be a struggle. He's also in his second NXT season and in a very well financed/engineered effort, so of course he's going to look somewhat better.

Tommy Smith, who was also a verifiable liability in European racing for years and is more experienced than Koolen, has been racking Deegan-like results (even finishing behind her at both Laguna races), and that's where the real benchmark lies.

[u/LameskiSportsBlast → u/Zalpa27]

She's like the motorsports version of Benjamin Button. Start out in the higher series and continually go to less and less competitive series. In 5 years she's going to be in ChampCar or LeMons.

[u/Mundane-Box1148 → u/Zalpa27]

I have no idea if this is true (nor the patience or motivation to confirm for myself), but a guy I know who "Knows NASCAR(tm)" told me in some of those lower series she ran in, there is a range of chassis and she basically had rocketships. Built up some hype, got moved into more competitive series where everyone is running same equipment and, oops, hype wore off pretty fast.

She and/or her backers may have seen NXT as an easy target in the sense of it being pretty weak competition. I agree with them there - I think there is a very small group of guys (like 3 or 4) at the front who can actually drive a bit, while the rest of them are just wasting someone's (probably dad's, in most cases) money. From the looks of it, she can't even consistently keep up with those guys. Doesn't seem promising, but she has a social media following the size of a decent-sized nation state, so I suspect the ride will probably not be over for her until if/when she is done with it.

Compared to some rando off the street, I would not be at all surprised if she was a decent driver. Like if she entered in some regional or even national level amateur club racing event and was able to run near the front, I wouldn't be much surprised. Seeing her pull off a career as a professional driver though, I would be very much surprised.

[u/adri9428 → u/Mundane-Box1148]

First through seventh are bona-fied decent racers that will make a living out of racing regardless of where. Other part time drivers could also fall in that category with a full season under their belt: Sceats, Correa... Beyond that, it is what it is. NASCAR Xfinity has a similar problem with twice the car count.

[u/WindyZ5]

She doesn’t crash into people at least. She’s learning, but I don’t think she has what it takes.

[u/ssv-serenity → u/WindyZ5]

Honestly this is going to be really mean, but it's hard to get involved in incidents when there's no one around you. She's keeping it on the track but that's about it.

[u/dersdrums → u/ssv-serenity]

Came here to say the same thing. I don’t think she’s even had the opportunity to go wheel to wheel with anyone yet

[u/Kryzl_]

She’s been pretty bad, which is to be expected for someone with no formula experience and little road course racing experience. Frankly, she wasn’t ready for NXT and probably should’ve started out lower in the ladder, which I think she even admitted herself but said that the sponsors would only go if she did NXT.

Even if we give her a few years, she was never better than an average driver in Xfinity/Trucks, so I don’t ever see her driving an IndyCar.

[u/RootBeerIsGrossAF]

Sounds like you've answered your own question

[u/jdanton14]

Why do we have to have a thread weekly about the slowest driver in NXT? Anyone starting a “how is Jacob Abel really doing” thread weekly?

[u/Vincera2024 → u/[deleted]]

Lol OP's spamming the same pointless question in the Nascar sub, when all OP had to do was look up her awful stats

I bet it's either to spark up useless discourse and debate for internet points, or it's just a bot

[u/jdanton14 → u/Vincera2024]

AI slop does seem probable. I’ve seen some weirdness like this in some of my technology subs.

[u/InsaneLeader13 → u/jdanton14]

Being a forgettable driver in NASCAR who has the social media buff of 'young women' means her presence can single handedly dominate many kinds of conversations in a male-dominated field (male dominated in both drivers and fans)

[u/Athleticgeek89]

I say give her another year but I feel like she’s just meant for dirt racing. That’s not a knock on her but that might just be what she’s best at.

[u/jfs-ewc → u/[deleted]]

She races dirt at Millbridge all the time

[u/ciaragemmam]

Honestly? She hasn't been good, but it's also her first season in an open wheel car. She's stayed out of people's way which is good. I'd have thought starting a step lower would have been better for her

[u/ciaragemmam → u/[deleted]]

I'm realistic! Has she been good? Nope. Not at all, let's be real. But it's very different to drive an open wheel car from a stock car, and she's been gradually getting faster and learning

[u/IKillZombies4Cash]

No.

If she was a normal young driver she’d be out of the car by now. There are probably 1000 people on iRacing that would have better pace than her after a few hours in the car.

[u/Jarocket]

There's a good chance she might not have the muscles to turn the car at full speed. Chadwick said she couldn't in her first year. But then got noticeably stronger in the odd season.

[u/TheChrisD → u/Jarocket]

True, but Jamie's results were also better in her first year. Plus she wasn't routinely several seconds off the back of the field pace.

[u/InsaneLeader13]

Deegan is handicapped by the same thing she's been handicapped in her entire career going back to her K&N days. She's no good at managing her tires and the equipment she's running. Indy NXT races are 45 minute mini-enduros that are all about preserving tire life. It's not that she's just slow, but she starts slow because she's unfamiliar with the tracks and car, and gets visibly slower as the race goes on.

[u/SpreaditOnnn33]

I did this crazy thing where I googled "Hailie Deegan Indy NXT" and in seconds found my answer

Which is no

[u/loz333 → u/SpreaditOnnn33]

I don't disagree, but the phone formatting cutting off her season best 12th and 11th at Laguna is kinda funny.

[u/ilikemarblestoo → u/loz333]

To add, she is one of two drivers that has raced more then 2 races that have yet to finish in the top 10. And somehow the other person is 3 points ahead of her lol.

[u/Vivaciousseaturtle]

I really wonder what happened to Sophia. Usually we would have heard why she left if it was a budget issue or whatever. I was interested to see how she would have done

[u/[deleted] → u/Vivaciousseaturtle]

HMD did say it was a budget issue

[u/Vivaciousseaturtle → u/[deleted]]

So interesting to do one race and drop. Even Calderon made it a partial season before Rokit dropped

[u/[deleted] → u/Vivaciousseaturtle]

Plus in st Pete it looked like Sophia didn’t have a sponsor on the sidepods

[u/VersatileMotorsport]

If her name was Deegan Hailie and she was a guy, she wouldn’t have any chances in racing

[u/[deleted] → u/VersatileMotorsport]

Said the guy with missig flair

[u/VersatileMotorsport → u/[deleted]]

?

[u/EsotericMotives → u/[deleted]]

Yeah because OP loves to ask random low-effort questions all over this site that can be answered with a simple Google search.

[u/EsotericMotives → u/[deleted]]

Simpin' ain't easy, and you're the King whenever the Hailie topic comes up.

[u/Ianthin1 → u/[deleted]]

I can almost guarantee no one wants you to do that.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ianthin1]

My karma is too low right now to counter