“If you are thrown in one of the most difficult series in the world to be competitive, is just not fair.” Daniel Suarez’s flaring tempers were visible in his words after his chaotic Phoenix outing. He only had four top tens at the short track. But let alone catching another top-ten finish, Suarez could not even scrape top-20. That is because Katherine Legge brought a crippling wreck in his way – but Dale Earnhardt Jr. does not blame her.

Katherine Legge ran a NASCAR Cup Series race for the first time since Danica Patrick entered the 2018 Daytona 500. The English motorsports athlete has a diverse resume in other series. But her oval starts counted only four Xfinity appearances and one ARCA race that ended in a crash. So Dale Earnhardt Jr knows what she needs most.

Dale Earnhardt Jr calls for more time behind the wheel 

Phoenix Raceway is a 1-mile, low-banked tri-oval track. Constructed in 1964 and catering to NASCAR since 1988, the racetrack is integral to the stock car racing country. What is more, it has some unique features like the ‘dogleg’ or the backstretch kink that distinguishes it from other ovals. So for a person like Katherine Legge who has acquired limited stock car racing experience, Phoenix must have been a challenge. The 44-year-old has competed in various forms of motorsports, from the Indianapolis 500 to Formula E to IMSA road racing. However, her Phoenix trouble proved only one thing – that she should have honed her stock car racing skills more, as Dale Earnhardt Jr stressed.

In a recent Dale Jr Download episode, the veteran first recounted how tough the Las Vegas track is. The bumps on Turns 1 and 2 can affect tire performance and car handling. So Dale Earnhardt Jr said practice was the only way out: “We’d go out to Vegas before the season and spend two days testing…You’d practice on Friday, all day – practice on Saturday all day – and you were still not happy with how the car got through the bumps. Most times, you would show up and the car would be awful…you’d be like hair on fire, pure panic mode…I can’t imagine how it is for you guys…If you don’t get through the bumps, you don’t really have a lot of options but to suffer through it.” 

After the COVID-19 pandemic, NASCAR has curtailed practice sessions to just 45 minutes rather than a two-day affair. That is why Dale Earnhardt Jr thinks Katherine Legge stumbled in Phoenix. She spun out her No. 78 Chevy first on lap 4, and then on lap 215 – the latter catching Daniel Suarez’s No. 99. So Dale Jr is not so bothered about NASCAR’s easy approval process handed to Legge – which is what Suarez and other drivers took NASCAR to task for. “I don’t think there is a problem or a perfect solution…I don’t really give two s—-about it to be honest with you.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr instead emphasized how Katherine Legge would have benefited from more practice. “What I believe better serves that conversation is talking about how practice might have helped her and the team approve the car…More practice is probably the core conversation and the true solution to giving a person like Katherine a better opportunity to not only have a better race but also not have mistakes.” 

Curtailed practice time is also not doing much for the benefit of Cup Series teams. Dale Earnhardt Jr asserted that nobody is hoarding any treasure from that.

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The money just goes somewhere else

When the COVID pandemic dawned on the globe, everybody went into panic mode. That included NASCAR executives who reduced, and for a while eliminated practice altogether. This had the aim of keeping the sport active after a worldwide shutdown that ensued in the first few months. Even after the pandemic simmered down, NASCAR kept a very lean schedule and eventually adopted the truncated practice times. The reason offered for this? Higher-ups argued it was meant to save costs for Cup Series race teams. Brad Keselowski became an active opponent of this. The RFK Racing owner/driver argued that they to go all-in on simulation models for their cars in an effort to bridge the gap for less real-world practice time.

Dale Earnhardt Jr perfectly agrees with Keselowski’s point now that Katherine Legge’s dilemma has reignited this conversation. The veteran argued: “The teams aren’t saving money by not practicing…Let’s just say the teams are spending a million dollars less by not practicing compared to what they were doing in 2019. Well, they’ve taken that million and they’ve spent it somewhere else. They didn’t save it and put it in their pockets. That ain’t what’s going on. They’ve hired more people to basically practice during the week…within sim, engineering and all these other things to try to continue to get better.”

Evidently, NASCAR may be able to do something better in roping in international racing figures like Katherine Legge. Handling stock cars is not easy – and that is visible in the limited practice time afforded to teams.