Hailie Deegan’s transition from NASCAR to open-wheel racing will take time to deliver the results that she and her fans want to see.
She has never even stepped into a go-kart, let alone a single-seater race car, which she must now do and take to like a duck to water if she wants to be competitive.
In two Indy NXT tests with HMD Motorsports, she has already made impressive inroads and halved the deficit to the leader between her first and second days of running.
More simulator and track time lies ahead before the start of the 2025 season, which she has set no specific goals for considering that it should be a year of learning.
Hailie Deegan ‘never knew’ that ‘little things’ existed in Indy NXT
Open wheel racing is a complex affair, whether that’s tyre-related, telemetry or functionality-based – controlling and harnessing a car’s speed is difficult even for the world’s best.
Take a Formula 1 steering wheel for example, there are so many buttons that the average fan could maybe only point out what six or seven of them do.
Appearing on IndyCar driver Conor Daly’s Speed Street podcast on YouTube, Deegan shared what has surprised her most about the move to Indy NXT so far.
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“This wasn’t a Plan B, this is a new opportunity for me. That’s more how I’m going about it, just because it is exciting.
“There’s so many things like even at the test in Indy, I was like, there is so many little things that I never even knew existed in this stuff.”
What would a successful first season for Deegan look like?
The expectations for Deegan’s first year in Indy NXT should be low – she is a young driver and like anyone else, deserves time to get up to speed.
She has a huge reach on social media, which includes having one million more Instagram followers than the official IndyCar account and over 50x that of the Indy NXT series.
But this puts into perspective just how valuable she could be to the North American open-wheel scene if that audience decides to become fans of the respective series.
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For a long time, IndyCar has needed to find a new audience to help itself grow, and every bit of success that Deegan has will only help it.
All she needs to do is learn as much as possible from 2025 to take into 2026, and show that she may have the potential to compete at the top one day.