By Sarah Handy, Staff Writer
18-year old Hailie Deegan hasn’t yet announced her plans for the 2020 racing season despite having had such a successful 2019 campaign. It all seems to come down to that one important factor when it comes to racing.
Sponsorship.
The California native has spent the last two seasons competing in both K&N Series (East and West), in addition to competing in the ARCA Menards Series as well.
Deegan’s last two seasons have produced records for the young racer, finishing third in the K&N Pro Series West Championship standings which is the highest ranking by a female driver in the final standings in the East or West Series.
Combine that with Deegan’s impressive 2019 racing resume of three wins, five poles, 13 top-five and 23 top-10 finishes in 28 K&N West starts and there’s little doubt that Deegan finds funding for 2020.
However, Deegan has said the struggle is with finding sponsors even with sponsors such as Monster Energy, iK9 and NAPA backing her over the last two seasons.
On SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s Skinner Round-up earlier this month, Deegan said, “People think it’s easy. ‘Oh, you get media, you get attention, you get sponsors.’ It’s not that easy. At the end of the day there’s not usually just one person that covers all your funding, it takes help from a lot of areas.”
Deegan stated it’s a dream goal of hers to compete in a NASCAR Gander RV and Outdoors Truck Series race at Eldora next season.
With that said though, Deegan said her current primary focus remains on what she’s seen success in, and that includes more K&N East seat time.
“If I had the dream scenario, unlimited budget, which not many people have, which I don’t have, I wish, I’d say I’d be running full ARCA with K&N East,” Deegan said. “Maybe throw in Sonoma for the West Series. I haven’t looked at the East schedule yet. It all depends on when the schedules get released.
“I think the K&N East competition, I feel like the knowledge just from being on the East Coast and the tools they have out there they can use it just helps a lot more with the setups.”
In 14 K&N East starts in 2018 and 2019, Deegan has earned three top-10 finishes.
As a rookie in 2018, Deegan became the first woman to win a pole award in the series at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Dirt Track and backed that up by becoming the first female driver to win in NASCAR K&N Pro Series competition with her win at Idaho’s Meridian Speedway in the following event.
Deegan captured the spotlight this season by opening up her 2019 campaign with a win in the K&N West season opener where she became the first female to lead the driver standings of a series at both the regional and national level of NASCAR in a male dominated sport.
As the racing world waits to hear Deegan’s plans for 2020, it’s not a matter of if she can get the job done on the track, it’s finding partners that will commit long term.
“I’m really just looking at finding partners who want to really commit with me for the long run. So, it’s definitely been a struggle and can already tell it’s going to be a struggle in the future,” said Deegan.