Cole Custer to run Truck Series for JR Motorsports

The No. 00 Chevrolet Silverado entry will carry sponsorship from Haas Automation and will be overseen by veteran crew chief Joe Shear Jr.

It will be the first foray into the series for JRM, which fields three NASCAR XFINITY Series teams as well as a pair of Late Model entries.

Custer made his NCWTS debut last season with Haas Racing Development. He also made history, becoming the youngest winner in a NASCAR national series event when he won the UNOH 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He finished the year with six top-10s and two poles in just nine starts.

"They've been a top-notch organization and competed for championships every year," Custer said of JRM. "We're really excited to join them and be a part of that.

"The drivers they have there are some of the best in the sport. ... Their whole program from top to bottom is first-class."

JRM's Chase Elliott won the 2014 NASCAR XFINITY Series title and Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors. Teammate Regan Smith, who opened the season with a victory at Daytona International Speedway, finished second in the points battle.

A third team that featured several drivers finished 12th in owner standings and saw Sprint Cup Series regulars Kevin Harvick and Kasey Kahne pick up wins.

Because of NASCAR's age restriction for the NCWTS, Custer is limited to competing at road-course venues and tracks 1.1 miles in length or less. In addition to those tracks where he started last year -- Martinsville (twice), Dover, Gateway, Iowa, Bristol, Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, New Hampshire and Phoenix -- the team will also compete at Eldora Speedway in July.

"I definitely want to run for a championship, but I guess 10 races is good enough for me right now," Custer said. "But even running a partial schedule, I still feel like we can go out and compete for wins at every single track. I'm not upset about it; I guess it's worth the wait."

JRM will also field cars for Custer in select NASCAR K&N Pro Series events as well as a limited number of ARCA races. He has four career K&N Pro Series victories.

According to team co-owner Kelley Earnhardt Miller, officials were not looking to start a Truck Series team until Rick Hendrick and Joe Custer, Cole's father, began discussing an eventual ride for Custer in the XFINITY Series.

Hendrick is owner of Hendrick Motorsports in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and also a co-owner of JRM. Custer is executive vice president at Stewart-Haas Racing, which also fields Sprint Cup teams and has an alliance with HMS.

"As we worked through those discussions," Earnhardt Miller said, "we said, 'Well, why don't we start now instead of talking about what could be in the future in terms of (Cole's) moving up the ladder?'

"We were kind of hesitant because we weren't in the Truck (Series) business. It was something that from a resources standpoint we really had to think about. Where we could even house an operation, because we're pretty much busting at the seams here ... running three full-time XFINITY Series cars (this) year.

"We just kept talking and massaging what it could look like and we're finally here."

Should things go as planned this season, the next move would be to take the team full-time in 2016. This year's gameplan is similar to that used for Elliott, who competed in the K&N Pro Series in 2011-12, made nine NCWTS starts and one ARCA start through HMS in '13, and then moved full-time into the XFINITY Series this past season.

"The way it works for NASCAR approval these days, it seems like that is a good way to go about it," she said. "If you can put him in the truck for the races that he's of age to run ... we were at about 17 (total) races but in looking at the different schedules for the series, I'm not sure of the exact makeup. We will run some K&N East races and ARCA races as well ... with the hope that we can do trucks full-time in 2016. We are not looking at it as a one-year deal, but want to keep in mind that it's predicated on his performance.

"Cole's dad is very cautious in making sure what they do is successful and they don't want to lay out his future without it being based on his merit and performance on the race track."

While the addition of another team to the organization initially raised some questions, L.W. Miller, director of motorsports for JRM, said the move has gone smoothly thus far. The Truck Series team will be based near JRM's headquarters in a shop previously used for the two-car Late Model program. And along with the four crewmen that transition over from the Haas effort, JRM will add four more employees to round out the roster.

"The last thing we want to do is put something else on somebody's shoulders that might mess up what we have going, because we're going in such a great direction," Miller said. "I think everybody involved ... was talked to about 'can we carry that extra load? Is it going to make us stronger or is it going to make us weaker?' And there was nobody here that didn't believe it would make us stronger in the long run.

"In the grand scheme, it's a few more people, a little more work for some of the departments, but that being said, it broadens our horizon of what we do and just our knowledge pool alone, I mean Joe Shear coming in to crew chief the truck -- he's a very experienced crew chief. There might be things that he can add to our program here that will (improve it).

"I think everyone was very willing to take on the extra load because they felt like in the big picture it was only going to make us that much stronger."

Custer, whose 2014 results were better than several fellow competitors running a full-time schedule, said he hopes to be stronger as well. Being a part of the JRM lineup should help.

"I felt like we had speed everywhere we went (last year)," he said. "Some of the races didn't go exactly how we wanted them to, I think mostly just because of my inexperience. ... So a couple of times I'll put it on me that some of our days went wrong.

"But I think definitely we had a top-10 truck every single race and I think this year we can be a top-five if not a race-winning truck."