Katherine Legge aims to make history by racing the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola ‘double.’ She’s just looking forward to bedtime

By CNN Newsource

Published May 22, 2026 6:00 AM

By Don Riddell, CNN

(CNN) — Racing driver Katherine Legge is preparing to tackle one of the most daunting feats in all of sport: The Memorial Day “double.”

Also known as the Indy-Charlotte double, she’s only the sixth driver, and the first female, attempting to race the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. They are the longest races on the IndyCar and the NASCAR circuits, respectively, and she admits that she’s still grappling with the enormity of the challenge.

“Being focused for a three-to-four-hour IndyCar race then a five-hour NASCAR race, it’s the same as driving from New York to Daytona Beach pretty much at, gosh, an average of 200 miles an hour,” she explained. “You cannot lose focus for a second of any of that. I don’t think anybody can comprehend that.”

When asked by CNN Sports how she’s preparing for such an extraordinary feat, she laughed and joked, “tequila.”

The double presents a grueling test of physical endurance and it’s a highly complex logistical challenge. Legge admits that, even during her media interviews this week, her mind has been wandering as she continues to process the task ahead of her.

“I was thinking about what I’m going to do with a hybrid strategy at the same time as telling people about how I’m going to do the double. I don’t know if my brain’s gonna be fit for anything next week,” she said.

Admitting to being a “crazy person,” Legge described how it would be easy to get carried away with the thrill of the chase without fully considering its crucial logistics.

“It’s this weird disconnect, right? Where you’re like, ‘That’s so cool.’ And conceptually, you know exactly what’s involved, but it doesn’t sink in,” she said.

She knows there will be a helicopter ride from the Brickyard in Indianapolis to a nearby airstrip and a private jet flight of about an hour. Upon landing in North Carolina, there will be another helicopter ride to the infield of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and a shuttle to the pit lane, and that’s assuming everything runs to time in Indy – without any curveballs.

Hopefully, the weather cooperates, because there might not be a second to spare; any delays in Indianapolis could scupper the rest of the challenge, but Legge says she only worries about the things she can control.

Hydration and nutrition will be critical.

“What am I going to eat when I get out of the Indy car?” she mused, “Because I’m going to feel sick, you always feel nauseous.”

She’ll be hooked up to an intravenous drip on the plane and is contemplating how to offset the expected burn of five to six thousand calories throughout the day; gels, gummies, bananas and baby food could all be on the menu when she’s racing in Charlotte.

A small club

John Andretti was the first driver to sign up for double duty in 1994, finishing 10th at Indy before engine failure curtailed his involvement in Charlotte around the halfway stage.

Robby Gordon has tried it five times, Kyle Larson twice and Kurt Busch once.

Tony Stewart raced the double in 1999 and again in 2001, becoming the only driver to complete all 1,100 miles of the challenge. His itinerary from that Sunday in 2001 is testimony to the fine margins at play, starting the Indy 500 at 11 a.m. ET. He finished in sixth place at 2:30 p.m. and was in a chopper 15 minutes later and wheels up on his jet 23 minutes after that.

Having taken on two liters of fluid during the flight, Stewart landed 55 minutes later, changed his uniform and boarded the second helicopter. Just twenty-five minutes after landing at the track, he was racing to an incredible third-placed finish.

After all that, “You’re very, very content to lay your head on a pillow,” he told Autoweek 20 years later. “And even when you do that, it still feels like it’s not stopped moving yet.”

Legge says she’ll be tapping up Stewart for tips before the 500, and Larson and his team have already been “invaluable” with guidance.

“The mental toll has dawned on me this past week,” she pondered. “You have to switch gears – pun intended – from IndyCar, which is fast; 230 miles an hour, lots of downforce, completely different beast, to driving one of those big old heavy stock cars which moves around a lot and obviously different set of rules, different drivers, different teams.”

A reluctant trailblazer

As one of the most prominent women in motorsport, Katherine Legge has always been a reluctant trailblazer.

She’ll be the only woman racing at Indy on Sunday, but she’d prefer simply to be known as a race car driver.

“I don’t like the female driver label, because it should be irrelevant,” she said.

However, she understands the power of her platform and with the support of her sponsor, e.l.f. Cosmetics, has even embraced the idea of a pink car.

“They really have opened doors for the little Katherines of the future,” she said.

However, that’s not to say it’s always been easy – last year she spoke out against a torrent of online abuse, including death threats, hate mail and sexist comments.

“It’s toughened me up for sure, I have a pretty thick skin,” she said, noting that nothing could ever dissuade her from chasing her dreams. “I think if you are not doing things that scare you a little bit, that push you to be better, that make you feel alive, then it gets stale and you get comfortable.

“And once it gets comfortable, opportunities don’t present themselves to you. So, you need to keep pushing those boundaries. You need to get comfortable being uncomfortable, so that you can keep moving your life along in whatever direction it is. And it might be up or it might be down, but at least you’re moving forward.”

In addition to making history as the first woman to try the double, she’ll also be the first non-American to do it and – at the age of 45 – the oldest. The Brit dismisses the former as being significant – she’s lived in the US for the last 20 years – but the age touches a bit of a nerve.

“I hate when people say that because I still feel like I’m 21,” she said, rattling off a list of senior peers in IndyCar – Takuma Sato (49), Helio Castroneves (51), Scott Dixon (45) and Ryan Hunter-Reay (45).

“I think experience counts for a lot, it helps you stay level and control your emotions, remain sensible and not take unnecessary risks. The exuberance of youth takes you so far and then experience takes over.”

But as much as she’s looking forward to the challenge of the double, she’s already looking forward to the rest and recuperation afterward, floating on the lake by her house with a margarita in hand. As for the thing she’s looking forward to most about the day?

“The nighttime when I go to bed.”

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