Katherine Legge is trying to do what only one driver has ever finished: race both the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 on May 24. Tony Stewart, the only person to complete the Double, says her answer when asked why she would try it was simple: “Why not?”
Stewart did not just shrug off the idea. He endorsed it. He said Legge has nothing to lose because she is not running full-time in anything, and that her focus is going to be the 500. He also pointed to the biggest threat to the attempt: weather, which can throw off the carefully timed run from Indianapolis to Charlotte and leave little margin for error across the 10 miles and 40 laps that separate the two races in their own ways.
The scale of the challenge is part of what makes the Double such a lure for drivers and such a headache to pull off. Stewart finished ninth at Indianapolis and fourth at Charlotte in 1999, then came back in 2001 to finish sixth in the Indianapolis 500 and third at Charlotte. He said he was the first and so far only driver to complete both events, and later described himself as the “poster child of how not to do it the right way the first year.” That history gives his backing to Legge extra weight: he knows exactly how unforgiving the schedule can be.
Legge’s Indianapolis 500 effort is with A.J. Foyt Enterprises, where Larry Foyt serves as team principal. The Indianapolis race has long been the harder half of the Double to manage because it sets the day’s entire timing, and Stewart said that is where Legge’s attention has to stay. If the 500 runs long, or if weather interrupts the plan, the entire Charlotte effort can start to unravel before she ever reaches North Carolina.
That is what has tripped up others before her. Kurt Busch tried the Double in 2014 and fell short. Kyle Larson attempted it in 2024, then again in 2025, an effort that became the subject of the Amazon Prime documentary “Kyle Larson vs. The Double.” Legge is now stepping into that same unforgiving test, with Stewart’s view that the biggest obstacle is not bravery or speed, but the weather window that has to line up just right.
If she makes both starts on May 24, Legge will join one of motor racing’s most exclusive attempts. If she does not, she will still have tried something Stewart says is worth trying. That may be the clearest sign of what the Double has become: a race against time, traffic and the sky, with almost no room for anything else.
