Hailie Deegan Aims to Re-Crack Racing World’s Glass Ceiling

Hailie Deegan, a seventeen-year-old race car driver from California, is aiming to break more glass ceilings in the racing world. While the likes of Danica Patrick, Shawna Robinson, and other talented women may have added cracks with each success, Deegan, the daughter of famed X Games competitor Brian Deegan, believes there are, “more barriers to be broken”, as she noted in an interview with AutoWeek.com. While it’s no surprise that a sport like racing - infamously dangerous and known for rowdy, drunk crowds - is male-dominated, very few female racers have had the chance to compete for full seasons at the top levels.

Deegan, who first started racing at age 8, drove her hammer into racing’s glass ceiling for the first time when she became the first female racer to win the Lucas Oil Off Road Junior 2 Kart Championship in 2013. Now, she’s a favorite of both fans and sponsors alike to win the NASCAR K&N Pro-Series Championship. So far, Deegan has finished in the top-five in three of the races as well as top-ten in four others in the first seven races of the K&N series. Her second place standing at Roseburg, Oregon’s Douglas County Speedway in June 2018 matches the highest finish by a woman in K&N history. And, Deegan is the only woman among nine the NASCAR Next class prospects for the 2017-18 season.

If she manages to cinch the win at the championship, it could mean a bright future ahead of her. In a landscape where most national NASCAR championship drivers are in their thirties and only 12 winning drivers are from California, the young Californian could be breaking barriers on multiple levels. Given her momentum, her family’s success in motorsports, and her desire to win, it’s likely that even if Deegan doesn’t win this race, she has a long and exciting career ahead of her in the sport.