I'm not sure how many NASCAR fans actually expected Bubba Wallace to get his first win in almost three years, first win in the No. 23 Toyota in almost four, and first ever regular season win in this past Sunday's Brickyard 400, a crown jewel race, at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but he pulled it off, holding off Kyle Larson following a red flag for rain and two overtime restarts.
As expected, the goalposts have once again moved when it comes to NASCAR fans refusing to accept the fact that Wallace, 11th in points and in a playoff position even before his breakthrough win, does indeed belong in the Cup Series. What else is new?
But it may interest you to know that he wasn't the only Cup driver who forced the stubborn portion of NASCAR's fanbase to eat a ton of crow this past weekend at the Brickyard.
Katherine Legge makes NASCAR fans eat crow at Indy
Many NASCAR fans were upset, and rightfully so, after NASCAR allowed Katherine Legge to make her Cup debut in the oval race at Phoenix Raceway in March, specifically after they had just denied veteran Mike Wallace the right to even attempt to qualify for the season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway.
Those fans were instantly proven right, as Legge spun twice and took out an innocent bystander in Daniel Suarez in the second wreck.
She has also had very little success on ovals in the ARCA Menards Series and the Xfinity Series, so the fact that NASCAR approved her to make her first post-Phoenix oval Cup start at Indy, a 2.5-mile superspeedway, even if not officially a "drafting track", drew the ire of many fans. I was among the skeptics.
To Legge's credit, she had kept it relatively clean in her three road and street course starts between Phoenix and Indy. She even finished in 19th on the Chicago Street Course after many thought she'd fail to qualify, and coupled with team owner B.J. McLeod's 16th place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway the weekend prior, it marked the first-ever instance of back-to-back top 20 finishes for Live Fast Motorsports in their five-year history.
One of the reasons for the skepticism about Legge running at the Brickyard, even with twice as much Indy 500 experience at the track as everybody else in the Brickyard 400 combined, was the fact that she was effectively set up to fail with a Live Fast Motorsports team largely known as a backmarker, even during their time as a full-time program from 2021 to 2023.
Plus, this start replaced her initially planned start at Richmond Raceway in mid-August, a short track which many believed would have been a far better fit, given her low experience level in the Next Gen car.
She qualified 38th, ahead of only Denny Hamlin after Hamlin's crash, and was well off the pace, adding to the worry. But in the race itself, she once again managed to keep it clean, and her 17th place finish, up an impressive 21 spots from the drop of the green flag, was the team's best ever finish in a non-drafting track race.
It also gave the team three top 20 finishes in their four most recent appearances. Even as a full-time team, they never eclipsed three top 20 finishes over an entire season.
At the end of the day, Legge has proven that she belongs in the Cup Series whenever Live Fast Motorsports want to enter a car for her, aside from perhaps in any superspeedway drafting races – at least for now – at Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway, or Atlanta Motor Speedway, given her lack of experience and success at such tracks at any level.
She has come a long way from her first start at Phoenix, and that was on display on Sunday as she drove to her career-best finish in what was one of the best overall races in the five-year history of Live Fast Motorsports.
She currently has two more starts lined up for the rest of the season, both in road course races. She is set to drive the No. 78 car again at Watkins Glen International next weekend, and she is set to drive it at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in October.
McLeod himself is set to drive the car in the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway in a few weeks, as well as in the October playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway.
The No. 78 Chevrolet is not on the entry list for this weekend's race at Iowa Speedway. Live coverage of the Iowa Corn 350 is set to be provided by USA Network starting at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, August 3. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss any of the action!