NASCAR drivers question Cup Series approval process after Phoenix race

• NASCAR’s driver approval process has come under scrutiny after a series of controversial approvals and denials.
• Drivers like Daniel Suarez and Kyle Busch argue the process needs to be more rigorous to ensure driver safety and competitiveness.

Chase Elliott admitted he had not thought a lot about it.

But some of his peers have.

And when asked by reporters at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last weekend, Elliott provided an off-the-cuff response, joining the group commenting on NASCAR’s Cup Series driver approval process, which has slid under the microscope early in the 2025 season.

The debate began before the Daytona 500. IndyCar legend Helio Castroneves was approved for that race. Longtime Cup Series driver Mike Wallace was not.

Then, it exploded when Katherine Legge, another sports-car and IndyCar veteran, gained entry into the Shriners Children’s 400 at Phoenix Raceway on March 9. Legge spun twice in the race. The second came while she was a lap down. She drifted too far up the track, bumping Josh Berry and whirling right into Daniel Suarez, who was in sixth place.

Suarez has since fronted the charge against the approval process, evoking the words of others like Elliott.

“This is the pinnacle of NASCAR, right?” said Elliott, the sport’s most popular driver. “This is supposed to be the very top tier of what NASCAR has to offer within their sport and within this discipline. I do think we need to make sure everyone is ready to go.”

“I’m not saying (Legge’s) situation was or wasn’t. I welcome new drivers. This is not me saying I don’t welcome these things or anything like that. I do, absolutely. But yeah, we certainly just want to make sure everybody is geared up and ready for a race on Sunday, the same way myself and everyone else had to go run the ARCA race at Daytona right before we ran our first Truck or Xfinity race. Let’s just make sure we’re doing our due diligence there.”

NASCAR gave Legge the OK on road courses and ovals of no longer than one mile. She did possess six races of NASCAR experience before her Cup debut.

In January, she competed in the ARCA event at Daytona. In 2018, she made four Xfinity starts and added another in 2023.

She called Suarez after the crash last week, and the two discussed the incident.

“She got set for failure,” Suarez said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a great driver or a bad driver. If you are thrown in one of the most difficult series in the world to be competitive, it’s just not fair.

“That’s the way I saw it. I was more disappointed in NASCAR than her. And I mentioned that to her, and I hope that she gets another opportunity … It’s nothing wrong with her, just the process. The process has to be so much better.”

Other drivers echoed that sentiment. The process needs work. It isn’t about one or two or three drivers, they said.

Castroneves had no prior NASCAR experience. He entered the ARCA race at Daytona the day before the Daytona 500, though. A Stage 2 wreck ended his stint in the Great American Race.

NASCAR rejected Wallace’s 500 bid because he had not driven on any intermediate or larger tracks since 2015. The 65-year-old has 197 Cup Series starts under his belt.

But NASCAR did approve Casey Mears, a 47-year-old with 489 Cup Series starts, for a race at Martinsville on March 30. Mears has not climbed into the driver’s seat of a stock car since 2019.

Currently, former driver Chad Little spearheads a committee that helps make decisions to approve or deny drivers.

“I think it’s broken,” Kyle Busch said. “I think there’s a lot of work that could be done to make it better. I also do feel as though it shouldn’t be suit-and-ties making the decisions always … I do feel like there needs to be firesuits involved in some of those decision-making processes.”