Hailey Deegan’s career is at a crossroads. Where does she go from here?

Hailey Deegan is looking for her next NASCAR ride, possibly wondering what the best route is for her – and teams are wondering if she has a future in the sport.

Deegan was the only female driver to ride full-time in NASCAR’s three national series until her release from AM Racing this week. She has a good following on social media with 3.2 million followers on TikTok, 1.6 million followers on Instagram, and 583,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel.

If she becomes successful in racing, she will become a superstar. This is why many people were so optimistic after his first few seasons of full-time stock-car racing. He won three ARCA West Series races from 2018–2019.

Toyota let her go for Ford’s driver development program, and she finished third in the 2020 ARCA national series standings while driving for team owner David Gilliland. She raced for Gilliland Trucks for 2021–22 and then for ThorSport in 2023.

They were solid teams and they just didn’t make it. She didn’t improve much in any of the three seasons, but the move to the Are?

The move to AM racing is certainly up for debate. They were good in their first Xfinity season with Brett Moffitt but were a relatively new team to the series (they still competed in ARCA and had raced in trucks). They could grow together.

Instead, they struggled together and decided to separate this week.

So where does she go from here?

Some would say that Deegan is a lost cause. With no or very little progress over three National Series seasons, is he really going to get better? Will he ever really realize that he needs to move faster? He ranked worst in points among those who had started every Xfinity Series race in the first 17 events.

And yet compared to many drivers in the He’s still young and some of his years of NASCAR experience came during the COVID-19 season, which featured no practice on several weekends. So to say that she still can’t learn or improve seems a bit short-sighted.

There may be people who think that she focuses too much on social media presence, but that is what has brought her to this point as it helps in garnering sponsorships.

Deegan is the daughter of Extreme Motorsports star Brian Deegan. He is known for taking risks on motorcycles.

Deegan may need someone with a similar affinity for risk to have a solid chance of succeeding – risk from a financial perspective.

Deegan needs to go to a place where she knows she can race for a few years. He needs to go somewhere with a strong structure to set reasonable goals for his improvement. He needs to go somewhere with teammates who can help him (although he did do that with his truck teams and it didn’t really lead to much improvement). She may also need a program where she races selectively in a variety of series from late models to Xfinity to help improve her weaknesses.

“I would hate to see him go somewhere else,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on his Dale Jr. Download podcast. “I would hate to see her give up stock-car racing all together.”

he is right. Deegan was celebrated five years ago as a potential superstar who could help change the game.

People saw something in him that made them believe. They haven’t seen enough in the last few years to continue believing in it. Finding a believer — from a sponsor, from an owner, from a crew chief — will be crucial to whether she can pursue a career in stock-car racing.

Bob Pockross covers NASCAR for Fox Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal, covering more than 30 Daytona 500s. Follow him on Twitter @bobpocross,