Ex-NASCAR star Hailie Deegan finishes dead last in her first IndyCar practice at St. Petersburg

Former NASCAR Truck and Xfinity Series star Hailie Deegan just had her first official outing in the 2025 INDYNXT by Firestone Championship. The 23-year-old participated in the first practice session in St. Petersburg on Friday, but the session did not go the way she would have wanted. She finished last in the session, miles away from the rest of the field.

Deegan had one of the worst NASCAR seasons in 2024. After competing in the Craftsman Truck Series for three full-time seasons (2021-2023), the California-born driver finally saw her dream come true when Ford backed her to secure a full-time Xfinity seat with AM Racing in 2024.

However, the partnership between Deegan and AM Racing ended midway through the season after a string of disappointing results.

After failing to secure a sponsorship to continue her Stock Car racing career, Hailie Deegan decided to do something new and signed with HMD Motorsports to compete full-time in the INDY NXT open-wheel series for 2025.

After getting a ton of testing laps under her belt on various tracks before the start of the season, Deegan ran her first official INDY NXT laps on Friday during first practice.

Bob Pockrass from FOX Sports shared the results of the session on his X page:

At the end of the session, Deegan's fastest lap time, which came on lap 11, was 4.7517 seconds behind the leader Dennis Hauger, who was half a second clear from the rest of the field with a lap time of 1:05.2225 seconds. Her top speed was significantly slower than the leader, with a 6.7 mph deficit.

What was even stranger was that she was three seconds slower than her fellow rookie teammate, Sophia Floersch, and 2.5 seconds down from her other teammate, Nikita Johnson, who was placed second last.

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Hailie Deegan finds the INDY NXT cars hard to drive

Results from practice sessions don’t exactly give us the full picture of the competitiveness of the field. No one knows what program each team is running, the fuel loads, the engine modes, etc, making it difficult to say anything for sure. However, Hailie Deegan's performance came after she admitted a day before that she finds the INDY NXT cars hard to drive.

During the session, commentator Jamie Little, who spoke with Hailie Deegan on Thursday, shared what the HMD Motorsports driver told her:

“I talked to her yesterday and said, 'What's the biggest difference between you?' She said, 'These cars are hard to drive. I've had to change the way I work out, trying to make up the muscle. My hands are small and they wanna fall off the wheel,'" Little said.

“A lot of little comfort adjustments she's having to make, and now just trying to learn this car. She's had three days of testing and that is it. So she's struggling a bit here in practice, but it is about getting comfortable at this point,” she added.

The second practice session is scheduled for Saturday, March 1 between 9:00 am and 10:00 am ET.