Professional racer Hailie Deegan is giving fans a look at what a typical day is like, both on the track and off. Deegan, 22, shared a reel of herself wearing a black tank top and hat, ready to hit the ground running. “The average day at the dirt track 😉,” she captioned the post. “Nice. You are definitely a wheel girl,” a fan commented. Deegan says she was into cars when other girls were playing with dolls—and she’s only just begun her journey. Here’s how the racer stays fit, happy, and focused.
Deegan says working out is necessary for her mental and physical state. “I love working out,” she told ARCA Racing. “I feel like I get a lot of emotions built up racing. It’s a very emotional sport. So working out is the way I can take it out. Boxing I love it. If I have a bad race, that’s how I take it out. Let’s go boxing. My trainer even knows. He’s like ‘you’re having a bad day aren’t you, I can see the anger on your face.'”
Deegan refuses to eat spicy food or chicken but everything else is on the table. “I get on kicks, like kicks of certain food,” she told Jeff Gluck. “I’d say two months ago, I was on this California Pizza Kitchen kick, where like I went there and ate a gluten free pizza like every single day. And now I’m on this P.F. Chang’s kick. But like, I’m on a sushi kick too; I love sushi. And honestly, I love Mexican food. I love everything. Everything.”
Deegan relies on caffeine and workouts to give her an energy boost. “I always like to work out on race day and get my body moving,” she told ARCA Racing. “I always drink a lot of pre-workout. It’s probably a problem and I know when I don’t have any I get a headache but I live off of caffeine and coffee. Before a race I always get a double or triple scoop of pre-workout and put it inside my bottle for my car but I always end up drinking it under one caution at the very beginning.”
Deegan credits her father with her love for racing. “He’s the reason I’m good at this,” she told Salisbury Post. “He’s always like, ‘If you’re not 110 percent into this you’re not going to make it.’ “So I train my butt off when I’m off the track. I work out all the time. I’m always watching film. I practice all the time. I have a dirt oval in my backyard that I practice on, and a road course. I race late models, go karts. Anything I can get in.”
Deegan says preparation is crucial for success on the track. “It takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work. It’s not just a race weekend thing,” she told ARCA Racing. “It’s not just a race day thing. It is all the work that goes into it. The buildup into it. That is why Daytona was so special to me, because there was so much work that went into it. There were so many deals that I had to get put together. It took a lot of time and a lot of sacrifice. We spent a lot of time going to Daytona before the race, practicing and testing and simulator time, day after day, and different things I did to prepare for that race.”