After a brief stint in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Hailie Deegan is set to venture into open-wheel racing in 2025. The laser-focused and committed driver, who will now race in Indy NXT, was a playful and mischievous kid growing up. Deegan had shared a glimpse of her childhood during a 2019 rapid-fire Q&A with Meghan Kolb on 3 Wide Life TV.
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Hailie recounted an incident that left her with a scar on her eyebrow.
“I was three or four years old. I put on my mom’s heels on my hands and feet, closed my eyes, decided to walk around on the top floor of our house,” recalled Deegan.
Continuing her story, she added: “There was a corner metal piece, and I tripped into the corner metal piece and cut open my face, rolled down the stairs. I had like eight stitches in my face for that.”
She then shared the tale of her second scar, the one on her foot.
“I was like 12 or 13. I did a cartwheel and landed on a clipboard, and you know they have those two pointy things on the side. It cut open the whole bottom of my foot and I had to get stitches down the whole bottom of my foot,” she revealed.
“I was like, totally fine. All of a sudden I walk on the tile and there was a pool of blood everywhere,” added Deegan.
As a racer, Deegan has had her fair share of bumps and bruises on the track, including what she described as one of her hardest crashes at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2022.
The multi-car wreck happened on lap 20 of the 100-lap race. The chain of events began when Kevin KSR tried to squeeze his No. 78 car in between Deegan’s No. 14 and Nick Sous’ No. 11. Kevin spun out of control, while Deegan and Nick, who were battling for the lead at the time, crashed into the wall.
“My knee hit the bottom of the dash or the steering column. Oh, that hurt so bad,” Deegan had said after the crash.
As bad as those hits on the track were, the mishaps from her adventurous childhood were painful too in their own way. It seems they toughened her up for the track.
Her mischievous nature as a child has been evidently replaced by a serious racer — with attitude and style statements that fit the part, much like other sports personalities of her generation.
Though her parents have multiple tattoos, Hailie was initially never that fond of the idea. “I just got an ear piercing right here with a ring around it,” she had said.
“I hate wearing earrings,” Deegan added. “My dad has a lot of tattoos, my mom has a couple tattoos but I was like not really into tattoos but I saw this one thing on Pinterest or something and it was an H-pattern shifter on this girl’s wrist. I was like, ‘That’s kind of cool’.”
The “cool” idea of tattoos eventually caught up with the prodigiously quick racer, and Deegan did get inked — a palm tree etched on her side, and an elegant leaf on her right arm being the most visible, and celebrated ones.
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Deegan exudes this cool quotient in the way she drives on the race track too. A style that would need minor tweaks going forward.
With the stock car racing chapter of her career seemingly behind her, it remains to be seen how Deegan evolves as a racecar driver.
“The team [HMD Motorsports] brings a wealth of knowledge for me to pull from,” Deegan said when her move to Indy NXT was announced in October. “And I look forward to soaking up as much of that as possible before my race debut next March in St. Petersburg.”
She will be driving in a completely different series than she is used to and that would be a test in itself.
