"Won't make that mistake again": Hailie Deegan faced unexpected Indy NXT challenges at Barber

Hailie Deegan's second Indy NXT race, the Grand Prix of Alabama, was not much better than her debut at St. Petersburg in March. However, she felt more in sync with her No. 38 car and fared relatively better on one of the series' most physical and tricky circuits, the Barber Motorsports Park.

Deegan qualified last among 20 drivers and finished 17th in the race. However, it was in the wet-and-dry practice sessions before that, that she faced revelations about open-wheel racing.

On Tuesday, she posted a VLOG from her weekend at Barber on her YouTube channel. The HMD Motorsports driver spoke about her first Indy NXT outing in rainy conditions, and the tricky practice session 2 before qualifying.

"Second practice was a little everywhere, 'coz we started on rain tires and then we went to slicks, and I really learned something new that practice session, (which) was how when the track dries out, even if it's just one little lane that's drying out, when the water is not sitting there on the track in that one lane, you can go full speed," the 23-year-old said. [8:15 onwards]

The formation of a dry line on the track, as wet conditions go away, is common in open-wheel racing. As the drivers repeatedly go over the racing line, the wet tires spray the collected water outwards. For Hailie Deegan, who had been racing NASCAR's closed-wheel stock cars before 2025, this was a new revelation.

"So I learned that very fast, that 'Okay, you don't baby it or anything like that. I didn't think the track was going to get back to its full dry pace, but it did," she added.

Fortunately, Deegan had no spins in the wet conditions on Saturday. Though her run in qualifying was the slowest of all, she had no incidents. She even encountered a new learning before the qualifying session.

Hailie Deegan was unaware Indy NXT ran qualifying sessions in wet conditions

Hailie Deegan driving her No. 38 car at Indy NXT's Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - Source: Getty

Hailie Deegan also revealed that she wasn't aware that Indy NXT conducted its qualifying session while it was raining. The qualifying session was similar to the second practice session. It began with rain, but ended in dry conditions.

Deegan, who was in Group 1, had to qualify in the first half, i.e., her first time driving an Indy NXT car on a wet track. Elaborating on it in the VLOG, she said:

"It's actively (raining)... the track is not drying at the moment, but we're still going to qualify. And that's one thing I really didn't know about this series. Like while it's actively raining, they'll still run us and qualify us."

The HMD Motorsports rookie shared why one group qualifying in the wet and the other in the dry wasn't a handicap for the former because the series doesn't qualify drivers on overall lap times. The Group 1 and Group 2 drivers occupy alternate positions on the starting formation in the race.

So even though all Group 2 drivers were quicker than Group 1 because they qualified in the quicker, dry conditions, they started in P1, P3, P5, and so on, while Group 1 drivers occupied P2, P4, and so on.

Hailie Deegan was the slowest in her group with a lap time of 01:27.5294, while teammate Caoi Collet was quickest with a time of 01:24.8394. Andretti driver Dennis Hauger started on pole position and won the Grand Prix of Alabama, his second consecutive win of the season.