THREE-TIME ATLANTIC RACE WINNER source: champcarworldseries.com With three wins and a third-place finish in the Toyota Atlantic Championship, marking the first victories ever by a female driver in a major U.S. open-wheel racing series, Katherine Legge had a year to remember in 2005. Legge was rewarded for her groundbreaking Atlantic season in this month's edition of RACER magazine, as racing fans from around the world voted her as the winner of this year's Most Promising Road Racer Award. The latest issue of the racing magazine features Legge as the winner of the Most Promising Road Racer category, making her the eighth driver with Champ Car ties to win the award since 1995. Legge burst onto the American racing scene in 2004, winning in her maiden voyage in the Atlantic cars, conquering the demanding Long Beach street course to take the victory. She used a daring pass in Edmonton to wrest the lead away from eventual series champion Charles Zwolsman en route to the win, and then paced the last 16 laps of the day on a tricky San Jose course to claim the victory. "It's a great honor to get the Most Promising Road Racer Award.," Legge said. "It means a lot to me to get the award, especially against such talented competition. I am very grateful to those that voted for me and I hope I can deliver on those expectations." Legge, who in 2006 will either race in the Champ Car World Series or fight for the $2 million prize awarded to the winner Champ Car Atlantic Championship, received 27 percent of the fan vote to earn the honor. She outdistanced F1 hopeful Scott Speed and RuSPORT driver and two-time Champ Car race winner Justin Wilson in taking the award. Her win breaks a three-year stranglehold on the category by RuSPORT driver A.J. Allmendinger, who is the only driver to take the honor more than once. Legge is also the only driver from an American open-wheel series to earn any of the eight RACER awards, although two-time defending series champion Sebastien Bourdais fell just one percentage point short of claiming Road Racer of the Year honors from F1 champion Fernando Alonso.
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