The garage area at Las Vegas Motor Speedway buzzed with tension as the fallout from Phoenix continued to reverberate through NASCAR. What began as Daniel Suarez’s frustration after being collected in Katherine Legge’s spin has snowballed into a full-blown driver revolt against NASCAR’s approval process. Chase Elliott, the 2020 Cup Series champion, has now joined the chorus of discontent.
The incident that sparked this controversy occurred with 98 laps remaining at Phoenix Raceway when Legge, making her Cup Series debut with Live Fast Motorsports, spun off Turn 2 and collected Suarez’s No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. The Mexican driver was running sixth at the time, on pace for a strong finish before his day ended prematurely. While Suarez and Legge have since spoken privately, the conversation in the NASCAR community has shifted from the individual incident to the system that allowed it to happen.
“Make sure that everybody is geared up and ready,” Elliot delivered an 8-word demand that cuts to the heart of the issue. “This is the pinnacle of NASCAR, right? This is supposed to be the very top tier of what NASCAR has to offer within their sport and within this discipline,” Elliott further explained at Las Vegas. “I do think that we need to make sure that everyone is ready to go… the same way that myself and everyone else had to go run ARCA races at Daytona right before we ran our first Truck or Xfinity race.”
Elliott’s stance aligns with Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, and Suarez himself—six of the sport’s most prominent drivers who have now publicly questioned NASCAR’s standards. Busch, with 62 Cup Series wins to his name, was particularly blunt: “I feel like I’ve questioned the approval process for a long, long time… there’s a lot of work that could be done to make it better. I don’t think suits and ties should be making that.”
Chase Elliott said he hasn’t given much thought to the Cup approval process but feels that drivers must be ready to compete at the highest level of stock-car racing to be approved. @NASCARONFOX pic.twitter.com/yWEps8ohD8
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) March 16, 2025
The drivers’ criticism comes with concrete examples of disparities between NASCAR and other racing series. Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner, pointed to IndyCar’s structured approach: “In Indy, there’s a testing process. I don’t think we have a testing process. You just have to enter, right? So it’s just, come one, come all.” Legge’s Phoenix debut came after just 45 minutes of practice—her second-ever NASCAR oval race—compared to the month-long preparation period that Indianapolis 500 rookies receive.
Logano, the 2018 and 2022 Cup champion, reinforced this point by referencing Hendrick Motorsports star Kyle Larson’s ongoing preparation for the Indy 500: “He has a whole month of May up there, and he had to get approved for one, but then he also had a lot of laps to get comfortable with the race car… 20 minutes of practice is really tough to say, ‘That’s good,’ and go jump in and go racing.”
For Suarez, who worked his way up through NASCAR’s developmental ladder after moving from Mexico, the issue is deeply personal. “I was more disappointed in NASCAR than her,” he said of Legge. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a great driver or a bad driver. Regardless of that, if you’re thrown into one of the most difficult series in the world to be competitive, it’s not fair. I believe I’m one of the best racing drivers for stock cars in the world,” Suarez stated. “But if I wanted to race in Formula 1 or Formula 2, I wouldn’t be allowed to. I’m not qualified.” His comparison points to Formula 1’s Super License system, which requires drivers to accumulate points through success in junior formulas before being approved for the top level.
NASCAR’s History of Driver Approval Controversies
This current controversy highlights a consistent issue in NASCAR’s approach to driver approval. Earlier this season, four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves struggled in his Daytona 500 debut with Trackhouse Racing’s Project 91 program, despite having simulator time and a NASCAR test session. He failed to qualify on speed and finished 39th after an early crash. Had it not been for the controversial Open Provisional, the four-time Indy 500 winner wouldn’t be able to race at Daytona.
The data speaks volumes about the difficulty of transitioning to NASCAR’s premier series. Since 2010, only 4 of 17 drivers who made the jump from open-wheel racing to NASCAR’s Cup Series have won races, with Juan Pablo Montoya and Kyle Larson being the notable exceptions. Most spent considerable time in lower series before moving up—Danica Patrick competed in 61 Xfinity races over two seasons before her full-time Cup debut, while Montoya ran 7 Xfinity races before his Cup transition.
As NASCAR prepares for Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the pressure mounts on the sanctioning body to address these concerns. The united front from Elliott, Busch, Hamlin, Logano, Larson, and Suarez—representing 15 Cup Series championships between them—suggests this isn’t merely a passing controversy but a fundamental issue that strikes at the heart of NASCAR’s competitive integrity and safety standards.
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