Katherine addresses criticism following NASCAR return at Rockingham

On this episode of Throttle Therapy, Katherine walks through her experience at the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Rockingham. She responds to the criticism she’s received and looks ahead to her next race at Talladega.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Throttle Therapy with Catherine Legg is an iHeart women's sports
production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You
can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Hello, Welcome to this

(00:22):
week's episode of Throttle Therapy with Me Catherine Legg. And
this week again I feel I feel after a race weekend,
I keep coming to you all with let's just say, drama,
and I hate that it's that way. It hasn't been
that way in the past, so this is a new
phenomenon for me, and I hate that I have to

(00:43):
defend said drama. Yet here we are again after Rockingham.
So obviously Rockingham didn't go as planned, and I will
get into that, but first of all, I want to
say that being a woman racing in NASCAR, it comes
with an incredible of pride, and obviously it comes with
a level of scrutiny and harassment. However, I will say

(01:07):
the hate mail, the death threats, and the inappropriate sexual
comments that I've received aren't just disturbing, They're unacceptable. Let
me be very clear. I'm here to race, and I'm
here to compete, and I won't tolerate any of these
threats to my safety or to my dignity, whether that's
on track or off of them. Racing is a passionate sport,

(01:28):
and I understand that fans have strong opinions, and honestly,
I love that and I respect that about our sport.
Constructive criticism is part of the game, and I'm always
open to learning and improving. I promise that I will
always take accountability for the mistakes that I make. However,

(01:48):
what I think people need to understand is there's a
very thin line between feedback and personal attacks, and it's
really disappointing to me to see how often that line
gets crossed. I think that we can all agree that
social media channels over the latter years are becoming progressively
more toxic, and what's happening to me It isn't just

(02:09):
about me. Online billying obviously exists across every major sport
around the world, whether you're good, bad, or indifferent at
that sport. However, the level of hate that myself and
my team are experiencing at the moment is part of
a broader issue that I believe women specifically face in
male dominated spaces, and actually the FIA, the sport's governing body,

(02:33):
have come out with a document about it because it's
so bad in Europe and around the rest of the
world as well. It's not just a USA thing. We
can't normalize this issue. In my opinion, there's nothing normal
about it. It's totally unacceptable. I have earned my seat
on that racetrack. I've worked just as hard as any

(02:54):
of the other drivers out there, and I've been racing
professionally for the last twenty years. I'm one hundred percent
sure that the OEMs and the teams that employed me
without me bringing any sponsorship money for the majority of
that twenty years did not do so as a DEI
hire or a gimmick or anything else. It's because I

(03:16):
can drive a race car. So my performance and not
my gender, is what defines me as a competitor. And
I haven't been in NASCAR long enough to be accurately
judged for that. You can't judge me on three races.
We need more accountability, in my opinion, from the fans,
from the social media platforms, and from the organizations to

(03:39):
ensure safe environment for all drivers athletes, no matter where
when what that may be. Like me who faced that
barrage of death threats and toxic hate speech following like
literally every event. Having said that, despite all of the noise,
I am more focused than ever. I'm here because I

(04:00):
love the sport. I'm still here because I love the sport. Right,
I could be at home on the lake enjoying my life,
but I love racing. It's intrinsic in me. No amount
of hate will change that. You're not going to make
me quit or give up, because I'm stronger than that.
I'm deeply grateful to those of you who have supported

(04:22):
me and continue to support me. Your voices drown out
the hate every single day, and luckily I have been
in tougher battles than you guys in the comments section.
I hate that I feel the need to do this
for all those of you who are misinformed. I'm going
to break down exactly what happened this weekend, and then
past that. I will not defend myself anymore because I'm

(04:44):
going to spell it out in very simple terms that
hopefully everybody can understand. This weekend in a Rockingham began
in a new car to me, the Expinity Car, and
that I haven't driven before, and I was fortunate enough
to be driving for Jordan Anderson Racing. They were amaze,
they were awesome. They gave me a really great car,
So I had fifty minutes of practice. In that fifty minutes,

(05:07):
we were for the majority of it in the top
twenty five. I have not done single lap qualifying before,
so that was a new experience for me. So I
went out there and I didn't do a great job
on my mock qualifying run in practice, but I knew
what I had to do for actual qualifying. So in
natural qualifying I went out. I got loose off of

(05:27):
turn two, so I lifted probably a bit too much
because I still had a little bit of PTSD from Phoenix,
and we weren't as high up the great as i'd hope. However,
we did qualify inside the top forty, so on speed
we qualified into the race. NASCAR I have a bit
of a different rule on qualifying where you can also

(05:48):
qualify in on owner's points and bump those people out
who were faster than you effectively. So I got bumped
out in my car, So in short, I qualified, the
car did not qualify. Now Jordan and Joey Gase and
jj Yaley all got together and decided that it'd be
good for me to get the experience that I so

(06:09):
badly need in these stock cars in Joey's car. And
I'm really grateful to the three of them for doing
that because it put me in the fifty three car.
So when you start a race and a car that
you haven't driven before, where the gear shifter is in
a different place, your seat positions different, the pedals are different. Visually,

(06:33):
it's different. And you're starting a race, right, so you
need to be switched on from the word go. You
have no idea how the car is going to handle.
Is it gonna go loose? Is it gonna be tight? Now,
I started the race in the fifty three car. Took
me maybe ten laps to get up to speed and
feel it out because it wasn't my car. The seat
position was different, we didn't have a lease motor in it.

(06:54):
Everything was different about it. For me, the brakes were
the biggest thing on that car. They were very much
more like a switch theory that on or off. My
brakes were a lot more progressive, a lot easier to modulate.
Having said that, after about ten laps, I caught the
back of the field and I started the past people
until we were in the mid thirties. Let's say I
think I was at the time, and I was hanging

(07:17):
on to the back of the field. We were on
average three to six tenths depending on the lap off
of the times that the leaders were doing, so not
thirty five miles an hour or some of these things
that some people are claiming. I will say that I
haven't read the comments. I've just been told some of them,

(07:37):
so I'm not fully armed with all the information that
everybody's saying, but I've got a slice of the pie.
So basically, about ten laps from the end of the
first stage, the leaders were coming up on us, and
I was in a train. So unless I wanted to
start making moves going forward, which I didn't because I
didn't want to take any risks at that stage of

(07:58):
the race, I was told just to lean and drive
around and do some pet stops and go from there.
So that's exactly what we were doing. The leaders came up.
The leaders passed me. I think it was like fourth
place and fifth place were coming up on me. Fourth
Place dove to the inside of turn one. I gave
him a lane. He passed me. No problem, and then
so Whilitch I did not think was going to make

(08:21):
the move. I could obviously see him. I gave him
a lane open. The reason it looks like the closing
speed is so high isn't because I breaked mid corner,
because I didn't. I stayed on my line. I stayed
doing my speed, which obviously isn't the speed of the
leaders because they're passing me, but it is not far off.
And he charged in the corner a bit too hard,

(08:43):
which is the speed difference that you see and understood
upper lane into me, which spun me around. And then
Casey Kane was unfortunate recipient of me spinning down the racetrack. Obviously,
at that stage you have no control, so that ended
my race. Unfortunately caused a team a lot of damage
to their car, and I think that's why so many

(09:07):
people are feeling so passionately about me and my NASCAR career. However,
those are the facts, and you can choose to believe
me or not. I turned off the comments in my
social media because I don't want to see it. I
won't see it. If you feel the need to comment negatively,

(09:28):
then I think that says more about you than it
does about me, if I'm honest, because I can genuinely
say I've never gone into a comment section of anybody's
online social media or whatever it may be and commentated
negatively about them. And I hate that I have to
do this because for the majority of it, this is
like a real small minority, right, and it's a real

(09:51):
kind of slice of the fans. But I really appreciate
the majority of the fans and that they see things
objectively and that they are supportive and that they just
love the sport. So I will put this one behind me.
We are going to Talladega this weekend, where there is

(10:12):
no practice at aol. You get right into qualifying, straight
on to one hundred percent throttle and hold it on
that white line and then straight into the race. So
I am back with Jordan Andison Racing. They've been again.
They've been phenomenal. They've been so supportive and so professional,
and the car is excellent. So I'm looking forward to
working with them again and I'm very much looking forward

(10:35):
to Talladega. It's going to be a plate race, which
means that it's going to be very different to some
of these short ovals, and hopefully if I have a
good result there. It will quiet in the noise and yeah,
change some opinions, so let's hope for that. Thanks for
listening to Throttle Therapy. We'll be back next week with

(10:57):
more updates and more overtakes. We want to hear from you.
Leave us a review in Apple Podcasts and tell us
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the topic for our next show. Throttle Therapy is hosted
by Katherine Legg. Our executive producer is Jesse Katz, and
our supervising producer is Grace Fuse. Listen to Throttle Therapy

(11:17):
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