Deegan opens up about spotlight, Daytona,
NASCAR driver is learning about the spotlight; opens up about sensitivity, Daytona
During the Daytona 500 rain delay that pushed NASCAR'S headline event from Sunday afternoon to early Monday morning, Hailie Deegan was talking to racing fans.
“I had to do the Daytona 500 Watch Party for Fox,” Deegan told The Charlotte Observer. “So I was answering questions from fans for about five, six hours.”
The world of fan engagement, personal branding and virtual appearances is nothing new for the 19-yearold driver since she made her first NASCAR start in 2018 and became the first woman to win a race in the lower-level ARCA Menards Series West (formerly the K&N Pro Series West) that year. Deegan has 958,000 Instagram followers, 121,000 Twitter followers and already 42,000 subscribers on a Youtube channel she started three months ago.
“I love social media,” Deegan told reporters Tuesday. “And I love showing people the behind-the-scenes of my life and everything that goes into my career.”
The attention on Deegan, daughter of professional motocross driver Brian Deegan, is only growing as she embarks on her first full-time season in NASCAR'S national Truck Series this year with David Gilliland Racing. She said she recently moved out of her parents' home and into her own place in North Carolina.
On Friday, she made her first NASCAR Trucks start at Daytona International Speedway (as a full-time driver), posting a 24th-place finish after running in the top 10 early and falling to the back after a wreck. She said she's leaning on the advice and experience of industry veterans around her, including spotter TJ Majors, crew chief Mike Hillman, Jr. and Ford driver David Ragan.
Deegan is still making mistakes and learning lessons on her own, some with greater consequences than others. She was required by NASCAR to complete sensitivity training before the season for saying the R-word, a derogatory term for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, during a virtual racing event last month.
Deegan spoke with Observer after her Daytona Trucks debut about the early lessons she's learning on and off the racetrack.
(This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)
• Alex Andrejev: You’re coming off your full-time Trucks debut at Daytona. How do you evaluate that race? It sounded like (spotter) TJ Majors was talking the whole time.
• Hailie Deegan: In the end we didn't get the result we wanted to, but I'm really glad that we got to run almost all of the laps. Kinda just in the mix with the field and I think TJ does a really, really great job as a spotter. Obviously he's very experienced and at a very high level, so I think having him on my team is definitely going to help a lot. I pretty much told him at the beginning of the year, because everyone informed me that he talks a lot, so I was like, `Hey, I need you to practically drive this car for me while you're talking to me.' So he does a really good job with that. I think he was a really good choice in terms of spotters. We were super lucky to get him. I'm someone who loves a lot of talking on the radio and even if there's a 15 second pause, I'll key up and be like, `Are you guys there?' Just to make sure. So I think having someone who's on the same page as me is really good.
• AA: What did you see when you hit the wall at the end of the race there? Were people checking up for dust?
• HD: We were in the top 10 most of the race just riding right there. But as you know, as the race goes on at Daytona, there's usually wrecks in that mid-pack area — anywhere from I'd say eighth to 20th is like the danger zone — so we've pretty much just laid back. I wasn't going to get stage points or anything, so I was like, `Might as well just stay out of it until the end comes around.' There happened to be a lot of Speedy Dry on the backstretch, so I ended up just riding in the back for a little bit and one of the people in front of me ended up checking up. Because of the Speedy Dry, they must have thought there was a wreck or something because there was a lot of it back there. Once he checked up I was actually moving up to the top groove because there was someone in front of me that was going a little bit slower and I didn't want to get too detached from the field. I was moving up to the top just as he checked up on the backstretch for the Speedy Dry that he might've thought was a wreck, and I got loose and sent down to the wall.
• AA: And then you waved off the safety team.
• HD: Yeah, the truck was running a little bit weird as we hit the walls so I shut it off. I started it back up and then one of the safety trucks was right in front of me, so I was trying to tell him to move so I could get to pit road quick enough. I think he might've thought I was done for the night. Me telling him to move was probably a little shock to him.
• AA: What was the takeaway from the first race there? At one point you mentioned on your radio how different it was from ARCA.
• HD: Yeah, the ARCA race was so much easier than the Truck race. ARCA, you pretty much just hold it wide open. And with how ARCA cars run there, you can't really get to people's bumpers or get any runs. You kind of just hold it wide open and it is what it is. It's very hard to break that bubble between you and the car in front of you in order to get to the bumper and start drafting and stuff like that. In the Truck race, I was running probably a quarter to half throttle getting out of the gas fully with where I was at, I would say, in the top 10 just because of how fast you're going and how much the draft helps and how big of runs you can get. From the beginning of the race to the end, I felt like I was a little jerky on the wheel, a little jittery going into the first couple of laps, but once I smoothed myself out, we made a couple of changes to the truck, I felt like we were able to be really consistent and really smooth and have good corner exits.
• AA: How much time or experience between sim work or last year's (Kansas Truck race for DGR) did you have to learn?
• HD: Yeah, that’s the thing right now with NASCAR, you're not allowed to go test or anything, so I haven't had a lot of time behind the wheel of the truck. Pretty much the only time I've had is at Kansas going straight into the race with no practice and qualifying. Coming to Daytona, we got practice and qualifying, thank God, but that's all the experience I have in a truck so far. Ford has really been helpful for me, giving me access to their simulator. We would go down there about once a week, every Monday, me and my crew chief (Mike Hillman Jr.) and occasionally my engineer, we'll go down to a simulator for a couple hours and just practice and get laps and run setups so we're ready to go to the racetrack.
• AA: You mentioned having some jitters at the start. Were you nervous beforehand? Did you feel like there were a lot of eyes on you?
• HD: Oh, for sure. And I think that comes with being a girl out there also. It attracts a little more attention. I think that doesn't help, and also being a rookie out there, you kind of have a double-edged sword with that. So I think just going out there and trying to not make as many mistakes as you can. That's the biggest thing for me, earning the respect of other drivers,
other crew chiefs, crew guys. I'm just trying to go out there and get experience myself.
• AA: So what are some of the things you'll take into next weekend in terms of how you race or communicate?
• HD: I think it’s being smart. Not doing any crazy moves, just kind of running my own race. Not trying to race everyone around me — racing the racetrack, as my crew chief would say. That's something we’ve talked about a lot. I know on the road course it's very easy to make mistakes. It's not a very gripped-up track.
I’ve raced there in the ARCA car before. It’s very easy to overdrive the corners. You're going very fast into a lot of the corners from the straightaways at Daytona. So I think it's just going out there and being smart, and where we’re going to get them is minimizing our mistakes.
• AA: You’ve obviously have a big following and a lot of eyes on you as you're coming up in NASCAR. You had to complete sensitivity training recently. What did you learn from that experience?
• HD: I learned so much. As sad of a situation as it was, I was glad I got to learn so much about that community, the special needs community. The sensitivity training that I went through was called The Arc. They were all super knowledgeable there, and just being able to learn everything about it was really cool.
• AA: What was the training like? Did you have to go somewhere?
• HD: Usually you have to go somewhere but with COVID and everything, it was virtual. It was a Zoom call, so I was talking to people there. It was a couple hours, so (I) devoted one day for a couple hours.
(Note: Deegan issued an apology on Twitter the same night as the incident. She also had a serious conversation with Hillman, who has a daughter who was developmentally delayed, about the term, and reached out to a Special Olympics program in North Carolina, according to an earlier report by The Associated Press.)
• AA: What were the lessons you took away from that, especially in terms your words or actions as a public figure?
• HD: I think it’s just being smart on and off the racetrack. I feel like you can always make mistakes racing and I think in life in general it’s about minimizing your mistakes.
• AA: So what’s next on the schedule? When do you head back to Daytona?
• HD: I might drive down Thursday. I might fly out Friday morning because there is no practice or qualifying at the
Daytona road course. So pretty much we only race at 7 p.m.
• AA: How are you feeling about the road course?
• HD: I’m excited. I’ve had a lot of sim time on the road course. I feel like almost to the point where I feel like every single Monday that I’ve been there during the off season, we've run a couple hours on the road course before we’ve done anything else. So I feel like I have quite a bit experienced on the simulator. Whether that translates exactly or not, that's depending on once we go to the track, if it rains or not. I think that just going down there and being smart is going to be key.