In the NASCAR Xfinity Series points, rookie Hailie Deegan is last among all drivers who have run all the races. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Deegan never really reached expectations in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, where she raced full-time from 2021-2023, but her results so far at the next level have reached a new low.
Some followers of the sport will say they saw this coming a mile away. Usually, a driver doesn’t get promoted to a higher series unless they are successful enough to warrant it. Deegan’s five top 10s in 69 Truck starts don’t exactly scream success.
At the lower levels, the Temecula, Calif. native showed real promise as a true talent. She ran full-time in the ARCA Menards Series West back in 2018 and 2019. During those two seasons, she won three races and finished in nearly half of her starts.
She also brought a different image and attitude than many of her female predecessors in NASCAR. The daughter of X Games star Brian Deegan, she was edgy and had a toughness about her that seemed like it would translate nicely to NASCAR. She has an obvious advantage in marketability. As of today, she has 1.6 million Instagram followers. That is more than triple what NASCAR’s perennial most popular driver Chase Elliott has.
A huge percentage of NASCAR fans are men, most of whom surely don’t mind seeing Deegan on their TV screen, in or out of her driver’s suit. Easy, I’m talking about advertisements.
But female drivers haven’t found much on-track success in NASCAR’s highest levels since the turn of the century. Danica Patrick remains the most known and accomplished. She showed some flashes of competitiveness but never became a regular contender. Her 10th place in the 2012 Xfinity standings remains a high watermark.
Deegan’s three seasons in Trucks were marred by misfortune, bad luck, disrespect, errors and frustration. The results weren’t what she or her fans hoped for, despite driving for solid teams. But she wasn’t an embarrassment either. As a 19-year-old rookie, Deegan was running at the finish in 19 of 22 races. She wound up 17th in points that season. Unfortunately, in the two seasons to follow, she wasn’t able to match that with subsequent results of 21st and 19th.
In 2022, Deegan seized an opportunity to make her debut start in the Xfinity Series, and if hope was waning at that time, it got a big boost. Then 20 years old, Deegan ran a clean race and came home 13th at Las…
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