What Katherine Legge's return to the Indy 500 with Rahal means to the field
A decade after her last IndyCar start -- a 26th-place finish in her second Indianapolis 500 -- Katherine Legge has is back to the top of American open-wheel racing after an extensive stint in IMSA. The 42-year-old British driver will drive Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's fourth car, a one-off entry, in this May's Indy 500, completing a long-awaited return to the sport.
Legge will drive the No. 44 Honda with primary sponsorship from Hendrickson, a leading global manufacturer and supplier of suspension parts for the commercial transportation industry.
"(RLL co-owner Bobby Rahal) gave me my first chance to win races for the team in the Jaguar I-PACE series a few years ago, and it feels like a homecoming of sorts to be back with the team," Legge said in a release. "Racing at Indy with an Indy 500-winning team and with Honda is an amazing opportunity, and one I am very grateful for and intend to make the most of.”
After taking 3rd in the Atlantic Championship in 2005, Legge made her major American open-wheel racing debut in the waning years of Champ Car. In two full-time seasons in 2006 (PKV Racing) and Dale Coyne Racing (2007), she made six top-10 finishes. After three seasons racing in DTM in Europe, Legge made her way back to American open-wheel racing, but landed a tough blow. Her team, Dragon Racing, had aligned itself with new engine manufacturer Lotus.
Part-way into that 2012 season, it was clear the Lotus engine's performance was far behind Honda and Chevy, and Legge's team, which included teammate Sebastien Bourdais, switched over to Chevy for her first 500, where she started 30th and worked her way up to 22nd. From there, she managed to run five of the final 10 races with Dragon Racing, including a best finish of 9th at the season-finale at Fontana. She was not able to return for a second season, though.
In 2013, she ran a one-off Indy 500 entry with Schmidt Peterson Hamilton HP Motorsports (what is now Arrow McLaren), and after starting last in 33rd, she finished 26th.
Since then, she's run five full-season campaigns in IMSA in a variety of classes, including three seasons with Michael Shank's team from 2017-19 in GTD. There, she grabbed four race wins, 11 podiums, finished 2nd in class in the Rolex 24 (2018) and finished 2nd in the full-season title race in 2018.
This year, she finished 2nd in class in GTD with Gradient Racing at Daytona.
"I’ve been a fan of Katherine’s for many years and know that, in the right situation, she can be competitive and figure into the outcome at the end of the race," Rahal said in a release. "It is nice to have her back with us to work together at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first time. I know she looks at this as a chance to show everybody what she really can do.”
What does this mean for the Indy 500 field?
Legge gives us our 32nd confirmed driver-team combination for the 107th running of the Indy 500 on May 28, with as few as just one more lingering out there. A few notes on where things stand:
>>Honda and Chevy combine for 27 full-time entries, with 26 of those including full-time drivers. Marcus Armstrong and Takuma Sato will split the No. 11 Honda, with the latter, a two-time 500 winner, making his 14th start this year.
>>Honda currently has signed on for two one-off engine leases for Andretti Autosport (Marco Andretti) and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (Legge), putting HPD at 17 cars -- right up to their hard cap of 18. On top of their 12 full-time cars, Chevy currently has landed three extra drivers for the 500: Tony Kanaan (Arrow McLaren), Stefan Wilson (Dreyer and Reinbold Racing) and Ed Carpenter (Ed Carpenter Racing), the latter of whom will compete on all the ovals in 2023.
>>With DRR having loosely committed to running a second car for the 500, as they have for four of the last five years, their driver would give us our 33rd entry to fill the 11 rows of three.
Back in November, I reported that bumping would be back at the 500 this May after IndyCar only barely cobbled together a 33rd entry right at the deadline a year ago. At that point this past fall, we'd already had DRR commit to running a pair of cars, ECR announce Carpenter would return to his typical program, Kanaan land at McLaren, Marco re-up with Andretti and Bobby Rahal state his team's intent to run a fourth car.
But what's different is Dale Coyne had told me in no uncertain terms that Sato would be returning in some sort of partial season role with DCR after his initial full-season with the team in 2022. His team, he said, would be running three cars at the 500, giving Honda 18 cars and a projected field of 34 vying for those coveted 33 spots. Whatever changed behind the scenes, Sato is now at Ganassi in an oval-only program, and neither Coyne nor Ganassi have made it known to HPD that they plan to run a one-off car at the 500 in 2023, according to a series source.
Once the field hits 33 cars teams are typically less interested in investing in an extra entry -- particularly if they're not a one-off team whose only IndyCar activity all year is the 500 -- but the same trepidation goes to the OEMs that lose money on each engine program they loan out. For example, at this same time a year ago, HPD was working hard in the background to try and find Legge a ride, only for that project to stall close to the finish line with the engine manufacturer already at 17 of its 18 slots and Wilson and Don Cusick known to be receiving support and direction from Penske Entertainment to become No. 33.
So who might that final driver to fill out the entry list be?
If I had to pick a favorite, I'd say RC Enerson, despite not having run a 500 before after missing the field in 2021 with Top Gun Racing. Enerson has a car and a backup tub, which for a one-off hopeful is a major step in the right direction, and his name was a common answer around the paddock in Thermal. JR Hildebrand, given his history with the team, would make a logical choice and give Wilson and Cusick the experienced teammate they crave, but he also last raced with the team in 2020. Ed Jones was known to have some money and be looking for a ride earlier this offseason, as was Charlie Kimball.
It was well-known Ryan Hunter-Reay was the early fan favorite and heavily rumored contender for RLL's fourth car, given his Honda ties, his history with RLL bringing him to IndyCar and Hunter-Reay's desire to come back for nothing less than a competitive car. But fans may very well have to wait another year to see if they'll again have a chance to cheer on Captain America toward a potential second 500 victory.
Will Marotti has also been working on piecing together what would likely be a partner program for a 500 entry with his Spirit of Speedway fundraising campaign, and Beth Paretta and Paretta Autosport remain a relatively unknown commodity in the 2023 500 mix. Thursday, Paretta tweeted that she'd been in Switzerland meeting with "a certain Swiss friend (Simona De Silvestro, PA's driver for the team's five races since 2021) to talk racing plans," but it's uncertain whether that leads to anything 500-related this year. In 2022, Paretta and De Silvestro sat out of the 500 to instead run a four-race program with ECR in hopes of building towards a longer-term partnership. But this past fall, ECR team president Tim Broyles told IndyStar his team was focused on its three cars and not pursuing any expansion or side projects at the moment.
Carpenter further solidified those plans last week, saying at Content Day that ECR had set a hard offseason deadline for any potential partners to hit in order to pursue a partial-season plan. That deadline has since passed.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy 500: Katherine Legge returns with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
