At 21, Hailie Deegan Is Already at a NASCAR Career Crossroad

• Hailie Deegan is preparing for a third consecutive season in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

• In 2023, she will be racing a Ford F-150 for ThorSport Racing, a team in the discussion for being the top team in the Truck Series—a team with five driver championships since 2013.

• At ThorSport, Deegan will be part of a four-truck dream of sorts that will also feature Crafton, Rhodes and Ty Majeski.

Hailie Deegan was proclaimed—by many of us in the media, anyway—as NASCAR's next big thing in December of 2019 when Ford Performance added her to its development driver roster.

Deegan, then just 18, appeared to be on the fast track to the Cup Series, and that fast tracking appeared to be justified after a solid third-place season points finish in the 2020 ARCA Menards Series. That led to a quick promotion to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in 2021.

However, the path to the Cup Series has at least slowed as Deegan is preparing for a third consecutive season in the Truck Series while sporting a NASCAR resume' that hardly screams for a promotion to even the Xfinity Series.

There is a twist, however, to the story coming in 2023.

The 21-year-old Deegan and her Ford Performance partner are moving to arguably the top team in the Truck Series after striking a deal with ThorSport Racing next season. ThorSport drivers have won four Truck Series championships since 2013, the most recent being with Ben Rhodes in 2021. Matt Crafton won titles for the team in 2013, 2014 and 2019.

ThorSport in addition to adding Deegan, is moving on from Toyota and will be fielding Ford F-150-branded trucks next season. And with the ThorSport operation team and resources behind her, this could be a put-up or shut-up season for Deegan.

Fans may find out if the sport's next big thing is someone to truly get excited about. If there's added pressure with the move, Deegan is doing her best not to let is show.

"I’ve been used to pressure my whole life," Deegan said during a media conference call this past week. "It’s kind of been on me from the start, so at the end of the day there’s pressure for a reason, and I feel like if you can’t deal with the pressure, then you probably shouldn’t have that pressure on you.

"I think going out there and doing the best I possibly can, working as hard as I possibly can for it, putting in the full effort and doing everything that I’m capable of and everyone else sees that, that we’re bound to have more success.”

For the record, there hasn't been all that much success to talk about in NASCAR for Deegan. In 46 career Truck Series starts driving Fords for David Gilliland Racing, Deegan posted just three top-10 finishes. She crashed out it five of 23 races in 2022. She finished 17th in the points standings in 2021 before slipping back to 21st in 2022.

Clearly a change of scenery is worth a shot.

“I believe in myself," Deegan said. "I think that we were just probably missing a few pieces to the puzzle because there are so many pieces to the puzzle. You get to a point in your development where you have to take that next step and I think ThorSport is a very established team and has a very established path of success and still just throughout the years they’ve been so successful consistently even with all the changes in development in the Truck Series and with the trucks themselves. They’ve been such a good, consistent team that I feel this will be a good year for me.”

It's a good bet that the folks in glass offices at both Ford and NASCAR hope so. The series and its marketing machine have been waiting patiently for someone to become the next woman to make an impact on the Cup Series since Danica Patrick retired following the 2018 Daytona 500.

Patrick has been called a trailblazer and someone who broke through the NASCAR glass ceiling to make it in Cup. Surprisingly, however, no woman has made it to Cup in the five years since Patrick's final start. And, before that, one has to go all the way back to Shawna Robinson in 2002 to find a woman behind the wheel of a NASCAR Cup car in competition.

Mark Rushbrook, global director Ford Performance motorsports, sees growth in Deegan's game over the past two seasons.

“We love watching the development drivers progress and advance on the track and off the track, and watching that maturity of Hailie in terms of how she evaluates a car or a truck on the racetrack, can break it down and articulate it back to her crew chief and team to set the direction the car needs to go," Rushbrook said. "I think (she) has advanced significantly both on the track and when she’s working in the simulator with the team, as well.

"I think this is the next opportunity with a team that’s going to be around her, the people that are going to be around her to give her that opportunity to go one more level.”

At ThorSport, Deegan will be part of a four-truck dream of sorts that will also feature Crafton, Rhodes and Ty Majeski. Majeski nearly joined teammates Crafton and Rhodes as Truck Series champions this past season, making it all the way to the Championship Four.

"The quality of teammates and experience these teammates have here is incredible," Deegan said. "Just talking and having those conversations and seeing how open and willing they are to help you and making sure you’re as comfortable as possible is awesome, and I think that’s something that’s invaluable.

"You have to have teammates that are willing to work with you, that are willing to go out of their way to make sure you’re in a good spot and being able to work with you on track and kind of going into races with a game plan and having those conversations beforehand, or if one teammate is running better than the other being able to have that comfortable conversation of asking, ‘Hey, what are you feeling here? What changes did you guys make? What did you like? What did you not like?’ "

Make no mistake about it. Rushbrook and Ford are still totally committed to their prodigy with much of the same excitement they showed when they introduced Deegan to the NASCAR media in 2019.

“We’re a family company," Rushbrook said. "We like to be committed to the people that are part of our program and give them every opportunity to exceed and to excel and be successful, so we wanted to give Hailie that opportunity with the right team and the right people around her to take that next step, to continue advancing.

"She’s shown the potential that we’ve seen in her all along and growth, and this is that opportunity to go one more level.”