Katherine Legge

Katherine Anne Legge was born on July 12, 1980, in Guildford, England, and began her motorsport career at age nine with karting after a family vacation in Spain sparked her interest in racing. Through the British junior series Formula Ford, Formula Renault, and British Formula 3, she worked her way up and made an early impression: in 2000, she became the first woman to set pole position in a Zetec race, and a year later she even beat Kimi Räikkönen’s lap time in another race and became the first woman to be awarded the BRDC ‘Rising Star’ Award.

Legge’s breakthrough in the USA came in 2004 in an unusual way, when she had no budget and camped out in the British Cosworth offices until she met team principal Kevin Kalkhoven in person. This resulted in a contract for the first three races of the 2005 Toyota Atlantic Championship with Polestar Motor Racing. Legge promptly won her debut race in Long Beach, becoming the first woman to win a major formula racing event in North America, followed by further victories in Edmonton and San Jose as well as third place in the overall standings. That same year she also tested a Formula 1 car for Minardi and became the first woman since Sarah Fisher to be invited to an F1 test. In 2006, she switched to PKV Racing in the Champ Car World Series, where she became the first woman ever to lead a lap in this series when she did so in Milwaukee.

In the course of her career, Legge demonstrated her versatility across numerous disciplines: from 2008 to 2010, she drove factory-supported Audis in the DTM, in the inaugural 2014/15 season of Formula E she raced for Amlin Aguri, and in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship she scored four class wins with the Acura NSX GT3 for Meyer Shank Racing in 2018 and finished the season as vice-champion in the GTD class. She also secured the vice-championship title in the electric Jaguar I-PACE eTrophy in 2018/2019. In the IndyCar Series, she set the record for the fastest women’s qualifying time in the race’s history at the 2023 Indianapolis 500 with a four-lap average of 231.070 mph. In the NASCAR Cup Series, she achieved the best result for a woman in eight years with 19th place at the Chicago Street Course in 2025, and in 2026 she became the first woman ever to attempt the ‘Double Duty,’ competing in the Indy 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day.

In the 2026 season, Katherine Legge is competing as a full-time driver for HMD Motorsports w/ AJ Foyt Racing in the IndyCar Series. Following her historic Double-Duty weekend, the focus now lies on consistently extracting the team’s potential throughout a full season and building on the strong speed figures she recently displayed at the Indianapolis 500. For a driver who has already sat in Formula 1 cockpits, DTM cars, Formula E vehicles, and NASCAR stock cars, the goal remains clear: to set further records for women in motorsport and to establish herself permanently in the competitive IndyCar field.