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Tag: Spire Motorsports

  • Chastain to run Cup race at Indianapolis with Spire Motorsports

    Chastain to run Cup race at Indianapolis with Spire Motorsports

    For the sixth time in the 2020 NASCAR season, Ross Chastain will be pulling double duty between the Cup and Xfinity Series on the same weekend. A day after he competes in the Xfinity Series’ inaugural oval-road course event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Chastain will pilot the No. 77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE sponsored by Melon Man Brand for Spire Motorsports in the Cup Series’ oval-shaped event for the Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 at the famed racetrack on Sunday, July 5.

    The Alva, Florida, native will make his sixth Cup start of this season, third in the No. 77 car for Spire Motorsports. His previous two starts in the No. 77 Chevrolet came in the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in February and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May under a partnership with Chip Ganassi Racing. His other three Cup starts of this season were in the No. 6 Ford Mustang for Roush Fenway Racing, (Las Vegas, Auto Club and Phoenix), as an interim competitor for Ryan Newman, who was injured following his last lap accident in the Daytona 500.

    Sunday’s 400-mile race at the Brickyard will mark the third time Chastain will race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a Cup Series car. He drove for Premium Motorsports at Indianapolis the previous two seasons, finishing 26th in 2018 and 22nd in 2019. After this weekend, he will have made his 77th Cup Series start.

    “I’m excited to roll out the Melon Man Brand paint scheme this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway,” Chastain said. “It’ll be fun to do something new. When we came up with the idea to create a personal brand, we wanted to do something different, something that would stand out. I think the look of the car and our branding initiatives check those boxes. Jeff [Dickerson] and T.J. [Puchyr] have supported me and my career without a moment’s hesitation, ever. It’s an honor for me to drive for Spire Motorsports this weekend in Indianapolis.”

    Chastain, currently, races as a full-time competitor in the Xfinity Series in the No. 10 Nutrien Ag Solutions Chevrolet Camaro for Kaulig Racing. He is ranked third in the regular-season series standings and has recorded four top-five results and 10 top-10 results despite being winless through the first 12 races. He is also coming off back-to-back runner-up finishes at Talladega Superspeedway and at Pocono Raceway, and has won two consecutive Dash 4 Cash $100,000 bonuses. He has raced at Indianapolis as an oval-shaped venue in the Xfinity Series from 2015 to 2018, but this Saturday, July 4, will mark his first at the track’s oval-road course layout.

    This season, Chastain has competed in 23 races across NASCAR’s three major division series as he has also competed in six NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series races for Niece Motorsports. He has finished in the top 10 four times with a best result of third at Homestead-Miami Speedway on June 13.

    The Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the 16th race of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, will air on July 5 at 4 p.m. ET on NBC.

  • Haley to compete in All-Star Race for Spire Motorsports

    Haley to compete in All-Star Race for Spire Motorsports

    Justin Haley, coming off his first NASCAR Xfinity Series career win at Talladega Superspeedway, will compete in this year’s NASCAR Cup All-Star Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Wednesday, July 15. 

    The Winamac, Indiana, native became eligible for the annual All-Star event when he scored his first Cup career victory at Daytona International Speedway in July 2019 in a rain-shortened race, though he is not a full-time Cup competitor. The win came in Haley’s third Cup career start, which was the earliest a Cup driver scored a first career win since Trevor Bayne won the 2011 Daytona 500 in his second series start. 

    Haley will be driving the No. 77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE for Spire Motorsports, the same organization he drove to his first Cup win, while sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. In addition, Haley, who became the 32nd driver to win across NASCAR’s three major division series, will also become the ninth NASCAR Next alumnus to compete in the annual exhibition race.

    Haley is in his second full-time season in the Xfinity Series with Kaulig Racing, where he has won once and notched seven top-10 results through 11 races. His lone Cup start this season came in February in the 62nd running of the Daytona 500, where he drove the No. 16 Fraternal Order of Eagles Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE for Kaulig Racing and finished 13th.

    With Haley’s entrance, 15 Cup competitors have secured their spots for the first All-Star Race to run at Bristol, including Matt Kenseth. The remaining competitors have until the event to either win any of the four regular-season series races prior to the All-Star Race (Pocono doubleheader, Indianapolis and Kentucky), transfer via the NASCAR All-Star Open that will occur prior to the All-Star Race on July 15 or as a final measure, be eligible for the Fan Vote win.

    This year’s All-Star Race at Bristol will mark the first time the annual event will occur outside of Charlotte Motor Speedway as Charlotte, North Carolina, continues to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This will also be the first and only time in 2020 where the Cup cars will sport number logos towards the rear wheel instead of the car’s doors, a move that will provide more space for sponsor logos to appear on the car’s side and which serves as a test for NASCAR for possible, future uses.

    Further announcements regarding the format of the All-Star Race will be announced at a later date.

  • Smithley to drive for B.J. McLeod Motorsports at Talladega

    Smithley to drive for B.J. McLeod Motorsports at Talladega

    Garrett Smithley will be driving the No. 78 Chevrolet Camaro for B.J. McLeod Motorsports in the upcoming NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, June 21, where he will start at the rear of the 40-car field.

    Smithley’s move to B.J. McLeod Motorsports will mark the third team the Ligonier, Pennsylvania, native has driven for this season. Through the first 13 races of this year’s Cup season, he competed in eight with Rick Ware Racing and two with Spire Motorsports while sitting out the 62nd running of the Daytona 500. Sunday’s event will mark his first NASCAR premier series start in one of the world’s fastest superspeedway venues in Alabama. He has competed at Talladega in the last four seasons in the Xfinity Series, achieving a best result of 10th in 2018 while driving for JD Motorsports.

    Smithley’s move to B.J. McLeod Motorsports for Talladega comes a day after it was announced that team owner/driver B.J. McLeod will be driving the No. 77 OilFire Rye Whiskey Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE for Spire Motorsports on Sunday. James Davison, a native from Melbourne, Australia, who has a deep racing background in sports cars and IndyCar along with making four Xfinity Series career starts, was initially scheduled to make his Cup Series debut this Sunday at Talladega with Spire Motorsports. Though Davison was approved to run earlier this week, NASCAR reconsidered their approval for the Australian to run the superspeedway event since there will be no practice or qualifying session prior to the race. Davison will wait until next weekend at Pocono Raceway to make his Cup and NASCAR oval debut with Spire Motorsports.

    The NASCAR Cup Series’ 13th race of the season at Talladega Superspeedway will air on June 21 at 3 p.m. ET on FOX.

  • Opinion: Haley’s Win A Win for NASCAR Regardless Of Spire’s Business Model

    Opinion: Haley’s Win A Win for NASCAR Regardless Of Spire’s Business Model

    In this day and age it’s not very often an underdog actually defies the odds and wins big in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. It’s far more likely in the lower divisions, but to see it in Cup is a borderline rarity.

    Sure, at Chicagoland Alex Bowman scored the win. Last season, Chase Elliott and Erik Jones scored their first wins. In 2017 Austin Dillon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Ryan Blaney all scored their first wins. But each of those drivers compete for established organizations in Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Roush-Fenway Racing, and Wood Brothers Racing. Each team has solid backing and solid footing in the sport. But when a freshly formed team like Spire Motorsports manages to put a driver in Victory Lane despite claims that they’re nothing more than a solid money grab, the underdog ranking goes up a few notches.

    During the red flag period at the end of the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona which led to Justin Haley’s first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win in only his third attempt, social media on Twitter, Facebook, and even Reddit seemed to be torn between excitement over a true surprise winner in the Spire Motorsports organization and frustration how a sports agency managed to buy a charter just to grab some money, at least according to a few media pundits.

    Regardless of Spire’s true intentions, be it to build their team up into an actual competitor or to make a few bucks, the fact still remains that they have every right to be on the track. They bought the equipment, they formed the crew, they established the business side of the race team, and they put different drivers behind the wheel. For that matter they’ve managed to not just enter the race but actually put themselves in positions to be consistent and post decent runs, most notably with Haley. They’re a new team, so to go on Twitter and angrily pound out a tweet because it’s just so wrong and dumb that a cash grab team can win a race; don’t hate the player, hate the game. The No. 77 is right where it’s supposed to be on track.

    NASCAR isn’t even to fault for the win. Sure, Daytona has lights and a boatload of jet dryers leased out from other speedways for the event weekend. But after being pushed back a day, who in their right mind would want to stick around four, six, eight more hours just to finish 30+ more laps? The race was almost through, and Peter Sospenzo, who is not a slouch on the pit box, made the calls he needed to make to score the win for his team. Nothing was lost by calling the race. Nothing was hurt.

    In the moments after the race was called, Haley’s name was trending third worldwide on Twitter, a testimony to just how big of an upset this was. Some compared it to the Derrike Cope win at Daytona in 1990, while others compared it to Trevor Bayne’s Daytona win in 2011. Some even compared it to Jamie McMurray’s Charlotte win in 2002. Ultimately, as this is an opinion piece, it has to be said that this win is more like Greg Sacks winning at Daytona in July 1985. The No. 10 of Sacks was nothing more than a research and development entry for DiGard Motorsports but since it was actually contending for the lead they changed their approach from parking the car to letting Sacks go for the win, which he did.

    Similar concept for Spire and Haley. They were on track just to earn some experience and to give Haley some track time as it was only his third start in Cup. But just as it was at Talladega in his Cup debut, Haley kept himself within sight of the leaders. That proved to be the deciding factor when the red flag was dropped, and now Haley is a Cup Series winner.

    The world loves an underdog. This, after steady weeks of the same teams winning race after race which is bound to resume once the series hits Kentucky, is an undying fact. There wouldn’t be this much of a buzz if it were anyone else. But it wasn’t anyone else; it was Spire Motorsports and Haley, a duo that wasn’t really supposed to be in the Winner’s Circle, let alone at Daytona, but accomplished that anyway. The little team that wasn’t supposed to win did just that by impeccable strategy and an insane amount of luck.

    That’s not an unfamiliar story in NASCAR, and it’s a story that’s just as solid as many, many more over the years. So social media can keep on talking, saying that Spire is in the sport only for the money, that the team was undeserving, that they didn’t earn the win. It doesn’t matter; Haley and Spire are still the 2019 Coke Zero Sugar 400 winners.

    More importantly, NASCAR once again has a true underdog victory in it’s ranks.