NASCAR 'feels irrelevant' to Hailie Deegan in honest Indy NXT comparison

Hailie Deegan earned the majority of her fame in the NASCAR realm, but now races in the Indy NXT category. The 23-year-old's relations were severed in 2024, and talking about the stock car racing realm, she revealed how NASCAR feels irrelevant to her now as she focuses on her open-wheel racing venture.

The female driver has raced stock cars for the majority of her career. For many years, Deegan raced in the Truck Series and bagged five top-10 finishes.

With backing from her sponsors, she was able to make the step up to the Xfinity Series in 2024 with AM Racing. However, she was unable to claim even a solitary top-10 finish in the 17 races she participated in.

This led to the two parties ending the deal prematurely and left Hailie Deegan without a drive for the 2024 season. Getting axed by the team led the 23-year-old to never look back at the NASCAR ladder again as she made her strides towards landing a seat in an open-wheel racing series across the United States.

Though Deegan made her way to Indy NXT, people reckoned that she was still concerned with NASCAR, owing to her racing dream being founded based on stock cars. However, the HMD Motorsports driver has revealed that she is not concerned with NASCAR anymore, and said so at the IndyCar media conference ahead of the Sonsio IndyCar Grand Prix (via ASAP Sports):

"As compared to the NASCAR side, I talk about this a lot with the people around me, when you're so involved, as someone who's like within the racing industry, whatever type the racing you're involved with, you almost don't pay attention as much to what's happening on the outside."

"So for me, obviously I still watch the NASCAR races, but like everything that I thought mattered like didn't almost. It almost feels irrelevant now. Like you can't remember who finished fourth in the last Xfinity race, like I couldn't tell you. Certain things like that. So I think that now with everything that's going on here, I've been so head down focused on this side also, so that probably doesn't help the case either."

Hailie Deegan made her open-wheel racing debut last year in the Formula Regional Americas championship before moving on to Indy NXT.

---

Is Hailie Deegan deep diving into the world of open-wheel racing?

Hailie Deegan at the INDYCAR Children's of Alabama INDY Grand Prix - Source: Getty

The female racer joined the highest junior league of open-wheel racing in the United States this year. Moreover, her ambitions to stay in the series and eventually jump to IndyCar are no secret in the paddock.

However, if the Indy NXT venture does not play out well, does Hailie Deegan have another plan readied up to continue her open-wheel racing journey? She was asked about this question on her outlook towards moving to Europe, the hub of open-wheel racing championships, but Deegan declined it, and said:

"No, I never really kind of thought about any of that."

On the other hand, Deegan will participate in the Sonsio IndyCar Grand Prix weekend and race at the IMS road course for the first of the two races on Friday, May 9, at 7 PM ET.