Crew chief Matt Swiderski will move atop the pit box of the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing team with driver Daniel Suárez for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, the team announced Monday.
Swiderski departs from Kaulig Racing, where he served as crew chief for the No. 16 Chevrolet full-time for each of the past two seasons. Replacing him at Kaulig Racing will be Travis Mack, who was the crew chief of Suárez’s No. 99 Chevrolet since 2021. Mack will serve a dual role at Kaulig, becoming the program’s technical director of Cup Series teams.
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Swiderski brings a wealth of knowledge to the Trackhouse program having worked with numerous personalities across the Xfinity Series and Cup Series since 2017, working with drivers like AJ Allmendinger, Noah Gragson, Daniel Hemric as well as Cup champions Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney. Per the team’s press release, Swiderski previously served as crew chief for the No. 12 Team Penske NASCAR Xfinity Series Team and crew chief for the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Xfinity Series team where he also held vehicle performance and engineering management roles since 2005. He also served as an engineer in the Dynamics Group at SpaceX.
“Matt is a proven winner with a dynamic engineering background, and we are confident he will pair well with Daniel,” Justin Marks, Trackhouse founder and owner, said in a press release.
With Swiderski atop the box, Allmendinger scored two Cup victories — one in 2021 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and another at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course in 2023. Swiderski’s No. 16 team ended 2023 with one win, four top fives and seven top-10 finishes with 64 laps led and an average finish of 19.6.
Mack, an alumnus of JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports, was Trackhouse Racing’s inaugural crew chief, heading the No. 99 team since the program’s inception ahead of the 2021 season. He and Suárez collected their first career NASCAR Cup Series victory in the 2022 event at Sonoma Raceway, where Suárez became the first Mexican-born driver to win a Cup race and only the fifth international driver to claim victory at the sport’s highest level.
Before joining Trackhouse, Mack crew chiefed the No. 95 Leavine Family Racing Chevrolet for 15 races with driver Kasey Kahne in 2018. The second half of that season was spent atop the No. 1 team’s pit box at JR Motorsports in the Xfinity Series, where he found a home with driver Michael Annett through the 2020 season, leading Annett to his lone victory in the season-opening race at Daytona in 2019.
Though Mack and Suárez advanced to the playoffs and finished the 2022 standings 10th in points with a win, six top fives and 13 top 10s, the No. 99 team didn’t see the same success in 2023. Suárez netted three top fives and 10 top 10s in 2023 with an average finish that dipped from 16.5 in 2022 to 19.0 in 2023.
Mack will now oversee both Cup teams at the shop in Welcome, North Carolina. AJ Allmendinger will drive the No. 16 Chevrolet in the 2024 Daytona 500, but the program’s plans beyond the season opener have not yet been announced. Trent Owens will return to crew chief the No. 31 Chevrolet in 2024 as Daniel Hemric, the 2019 Sunoco Rookie of the Year, slots into the seat to replace Justin Haley.