Who is Katherine Legge and what is the 'Double Duty' she's attempting today?

Katherine Legge

Who is Katherine Legge and what is the 'Double Duty' she's attempting today?

Katherine Legge will attempt to make history this weekend

Chris Deeley

Sunday 24 May 2026 01:57 Updated: 09:01

British driver Katherine Legge is attempting Double Duty today (Sunday May 24), aiming to become just the second person to complete the iconic Memorial Day Double.

If you're a motorsport fan from outside the United States, how much of that sentence did you actually understand? Probably the connecting words, and things like 'Sunday', for sure.

If that sounds patronising, it's really not meant to be. It's more of an acknowledgement of the fact that Legge is better known inside the US than out of it (despite being from Surrey), and that most people internationally have only vaguely heard of Memorial Day as a holiday, never mind there being a Double attached to it.

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Fortunately, that's where we come in. We do know about these things. Hopefully you've come here to learn them. Welcome. Take a seat. Tea? Coffee? We'll get that for you now. Let's begin...

Who is Katherine Legge?

As you've probably figured out from context clues at this point, Legge is a British racing driver, who now races predominantly in the States.

The 45-year-old has had a long and successful career in a number of different racing series over the last 25+ years, starting out in Formula Three, Formula Renault and Formula Ford before heading stateside for the Toyota Atlantic Championship.

After that...well, everything. She tested an F1 car in 2005, and has raced in Champ Car, DTM, IMSA, WEC, Formula E, and more. The two important series for this weekend, though, are NASCAR and IndyCar.

Legge first ran in the latter in 2012 with Lotus-Dragon Racing (yes, sick name), and has been back periodically over the years, running the Indy 500 four times and becoming the fastest female driver ever in qualifying for the iconic race.

Despite a couple of races in NASCAR's second-tier Xfinity Series (now O'Reilly Series), an opportunity in the top-tier Cup Series didn't arise until last year. She raced on ovals and road courses (AKA 'normal racing circuits'), and acquitted herself well for someone coming over from mostly sports car and open-wheel racing. That takes us up to the start of this year...

Right, what's Double Duty then?

Something fun about the NASCAR Cup Series is that if it's between February and early November, it's probably going to be race week. Including two exhibition races, they race on 38 out of 40 consecutive weeks during the season.

That means that if you're another motor racing series that likes to race on Sundays, you're probably going to clash with a NASCAR race. The Indy 500 (12.30pm Eastern, 5.30pm UK) isn't just any other race though, it's the only one in American motorsports that can demolish NASCAR's viewing figures on that weekend.

The race which has almost always come up against the 500 is the Cup Series race at Charlotte, known as the Coca-Cola 600 since the 80s. The Coke 600 (6pm Eastern, 11pm UK) is the longest race in NASCAR, and perhaps its second most famous Crown Jewel event.

You see where this is going, right? Since the lights required for night racing were installed at Charlotte in the early 1990s, the NASCAR start time has been moved back so that the races no longer overlap. It is now theoretically possible to race the Indy 500, get straight on a private jet for 55 minutes, and race the Coke 600.

That's Double Duty. That's the Memorial Day Double. You run the longest race in IndyCar, get on a plane, and run the longest race in NASCAR a couple of hours later. 1100 miles of racing in a day.

Has anyone ever won both races in one day?

No! God no! Nobody attempting Double Duty has even won one of the two races. Only nine drivers have managed to start both races, and Tony Stewart became the first and – to this day – only driver to even complete the full 1,100 laps. He finished sixth at Indy and third in Charlotte.

Robby Gordon got agonisingly close the next year, mind you, completing 500 miles at Indy before finishing a lap down on the leader at Charlotte. That's only 1098.5 miles races, Robby. That won't cut it.

After Stewart and Gordon made multiple attempts in the late 90s and early 2000s, only Kurt Busch (2014) and Kyle Larson (2024, 25) have made the attempt. Busch ran well at Indy but blew an engine at Charlotte, while Larson's efforts were both scuppered by weather (well, weather and a crash, but mostly weather).

If Legge can just make it to the start line of both races (and don't put the mortgage on it – the weather looks shaky again), she'll be just the sixth person ever to do that – as well as the first woman, and first non-American.

Can Katherine Legge complete the double?

Honestly? Probably not! It's an almost impossible feat! It's not just that the weather has to be perfect, and that both of your cars have to avoid breaking over 1,100 miles of racing. It's not just that your cars have to be fast enough that you don't finish a lap down in either race – which Legge's No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports NASCAR ride almost certainly isn't.

It's also that racing at 200mph+ is astonishingly physically taxing. Full-time NASCAR drivers are exhausted at the end of 4+ hours of the Coke 600, and they haven't even had to wrangle an IndyCar around Indianapolis for three hours first. And they're full-time NASCAR drivers, which Legge is absolutely not. She hasn't run a single NASCAR or IndyCar race on an oval since last October.