INDIANAPOLIS — Katherine Legge has driven all over the world in every type of racing automobile imaginable.

From sports cars to stock cars to Indy-style cars, on various continents with varying results.

And now at 42, with all those odometer clicks behind her, she says nothing means more than the 500 miles ahead of her next Sunday.

This won’t be her first Indianapolis 500. It’ll be her third, in fact, but her first in a decade, and frankly, as every racer says, once you’ve worn the driver’s uniform and walked down that starting grid on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend …

“You always want to be in it, 100%. It’s like an addiction that gets in your blood,” Legge says. “There’s no race in the world as big as the Indy 500. It’s the biggest sporting event in the world. It’s just … you know … just a really cool event to be a part of.”

Growing up a racing fan in Guildford, England, Legge was obviously familiar with Formula One, and also the European sports-car circuits as well as our own splashy piece of that world — the Rolex 24 at Daytona, where she’s been a regular competitor over the past 10 years.

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North America’s other forms of racing — its bread-and-butter products best displayed at Indy and Daytona — were indeed foreign to her. But then her country’s racing hero, Nigel Mansell, won the 1992 F1 World Championship, had a tiff with team ownership, and bolted for the U.S. IndyCar Series, where he won five races and the championship in his first of two seasons over here.

“Nigel Mansell came over here to race, and that’s when IndyCar kinda came to England,” Legge says. “Then we were all, ‘huh, this racing in America looks pretty cool.’

“Then a lot of others came over. Dan Wheldon was the next famous name that came over and made a name for himself over here.”

For her part, Legge has become a familiar name and figure within the American sports-car world, where she still competes in IMSA’s WeatherTech Championship, this year co-driving an Acura with Sheena Monk in the GTD class.

Beyond that, she’s also known as one of 10 women to start the Indy 500 since Janet Guthrie broke the gender barrier in 1977. Legge ran Indy in 2012 and ’13, and returned this month as one of 34 drivers looking to be among the traditional 33 starters.

She survived Saturday’s first day of qualifying weekend, though barely. Under Indy’s modernized qualifying procedure, only spots 13 through 30 were locked into position during Saturday’s strategy-heavy speed trials. She got the 30th, with an average speed of 231.070 over four razor’s edge, full-tilt and, yes, hairy laps at the Brickyard.

“It’s a big relief,” says Legge, who begins with a laugh when asked how her Indy car compares to her IMSA Acura.

“It’s a totally different sport,” she says. “Mentally, there are lots of crossovers. It’s still racing. You’re still out there going fast and hitting your marks. There’s still a level of control that you have in the car.

“But I think as far as the actual driving goes, the amount of downforce and level of speed these cars have, compared to sports cars, I think it’s apples to oranges.”

If you’re tempted to suggest Legge’s 30th-fastest qualifying effort is nothing to trumpet, consider this: Her three Honda teammates with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing — Christian Lundgaard, Jack Harvey and Graham Rahal — were three of the four outside the top 30 and returned Sunday to hopefully qualify for the three-car final row.

It’s all part of a qualifying procedure introduced last year to America’s oldest ongoing auto race. In keeping with Indy’s penchant for tradition, it’s still the fastest 33 cars that start Sunday’s race, regardless of points position, championship pedigree, sponsorship interests, etc.

But Indy, like its NASCAR cohorts in Daytona, aren’t afraid to tinker or, at times, fully overhaul the same ol’ same ol’.

That’s why the fastest 12 from Saturday’s first day of qualifying advanced to Sunday’s two-round battle to identify the fastest man at Indy as well as set the first four rows for next Sunday’s 107th Indianapolis 500.

It’s the latest nudge in capitulating to modern sports-entertainment needs since Roger Penske bought the famed property three years ago. After several years of relative doldrums and an unmistakable loss of momentum, Penske has made it his mission to steer Indy through its 11th decade, into a 12th and beyond, all while keeping his foot on the accelerator.

Good weather helps, of course, and this weekend was as glorious a Hoosier spring as you could order. The week ahead promises more of the same, as Monday’s two-hour practice session is followed by three days of a quiet track, then Friday’s two-hour final practice — “Carburetion Day,” they still call it.

It all leads, as always, to Sunday’s traditional pomp and circumstance prior to the 12:45 green flag. While NASCAR is rightfully celebrating this past week’s return to North Wilkesboro, Indy again celebrates what it has never quit celebrating since 1911.

Indy’s famous Month of May is many things to many people, but when it culminates on that Sunday before Memorial Day, it’s simply “the place to be.”

“There’s no describing what it means to be part of the 500,” Legge says. “It has a life of its own.”

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Katherine Legge feeds 'addiction,' qualifies for Sunday's Indy 500