Jimmie Johnson is arguably the greatest NASCAR driver in the 76-year history of the sport, and the seven-time Cup Series champion wrapped up his second season as a top-level owner earlier this month at Phoenix Raceway.
Johnson’s transition to the ownership side of the sport has, however, been an uphill battle; a manufacturer switch, driver change, numerous new faces to the organization and inadequate results, for starters.
“It’s been a journey. Where I stand today, I have learned so much in the last two years,” Johnson told NASCAR.com. “The sport has evolved a bunch in the last two years. When you look at the first year and the competitiveness of our organization and how the sport continues to push forward and where the big teams are finding speed, how they are stacking 10 to 20 things to define a tenth of a second advantage. As time goes on, it’s more challenging to consistently compete at that level.”
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In May 2023, Legacy announced it would swap from Chevrolet to Toyota ahead of the 2024 season, removing Johnson from under the General Motors banner for the first time in his Cup career. That led to a lame-duck final two-thirds of 2023 as data became harder to access and manufacturer support dried up.
Expectations were high with the manufacturer change, though, and Legacy’s addition to Toyota’s pecking order now meant having three multi-car organizations for the successful OEM.
The results were not immediate.
“This is a long-term play for us with Toyota,” Johnson said. “We thought this year would be a bit smoother, and it wasn’t. In that are lessons for us. It is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it except work harder and get better. That’s what we’re gearing up for.”
While Johnson believes Legacy is positioned “very well for the future” with Toyota, the first year was dissatisfying on the track. Between Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek, Legacy collected a substandard six top-10 finishes combined. Jones earned the team’s lone top-five result of 2024 last month at Talladega Superspeedway.
“We couldn’t have tried any harder this year,” Johnson said. “It’s just part of the journey, is probably the best way to put it. I think this year has been a very transformational year for us. We won’t have a great sense of the change until we get into probably March of next year.”
Change was needed.
In July, Bobby Kennedy was named Legacy’s general manager. Less than one month later, the team hired veteran engineer Jacob Canter to be the organization’s director of competition. In October, Brian Campe, who has nearly two decades of experience split between NASCAR and IndyCar, was named technical director.
Campe previously worked with Johnson at Hendrick Motorsports. Canter has been paired with some of the sport’s biggest names, including being a race engineer for Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing. Both were ready to give their input in taking Legacy to the next level.
“It boils down to details and adding additional details to look at every year, every race, every car,” Campe said of what Legacy needs to address over the offseason. “We’re going to push really hard and use our collective experience as well as our collective critical thinking and problem-solving. It’s not that, ‘Here, this is the way I’ve seen it done at other places, so we should do it this way.’
“We have a lot of people coming in from a lot of different experiences and we should lean into their experience and knowledge to try and build the Legacy Motor Club way. I think that’s what the offseason effort is: How is Legacy Motor Club going to go race in the Cup Series? It won’t look the same as other places; it will be what we build it into.”
Former Cup crew chief Chad Johnston was announced as one of the team’s newest hires last week, joining Legacy as the manager of race engineering. Travis Mack has also joined the team and will be the crew chief for Nemechek in 2025, in a move announced Tuesday. Ben Beshore will remain with the organization and lead the way for the No. 43 team with Jones.
“We need people that have been there, done it, seen it all,” Johnson said. “There is young experience coming through the door to manage the young people that we have and help build out the advancements and processes. That’s what we realized the most this year; we needed that leadership at the top.”
Spending the last three months with Legacy, Canter knows that there will be a plethora of areas for the team to improve heading into 2025.
“We’re going to have a lot,” he said. “That’s difficult because I’ve been trying to do more understanding and evaluating to see where the program is and where we could potentially find gains and align ourselves and move forward.”
Both Campe and Canter speak with Johnson regularly. When Johnson originally bought into the team two years ago, he figured his role would be more competition-focused. The California native has since come to realize that he’s needed more to generate revenue with partnerships on the business side.
Canter states that Johnson doesn’t give himself enough credit for how deeply embedded he is with the team, trying to steer the ship in the right direction. To that end, “Seven-Time” will also return to drive a partial Cup Series schedule in 2025 for a third consecutive season.
“He has tireless effort and is constantly working,” Canter said of Johnson. “He doesn’t give himself a lot of credit saying he’s more on the business side of things now, but he’s not. He’s also on the competition side of things, and we rely on him. Each week, there are a couple of little nuggets of information that we can lean on him for. His experience and his wherewithal are impactful for the drivers and crew chiefs, and it helps deliver a message.”
The message this offseason? Improvements are needed.
The team approaches each other as a family, so they can depend on one another in battle. Legacy also wants to establish culture and continuity, allowing Jones and Nemechek to be put in pressure-packed situations and enabling them to shine on the race track.
“We’re moving stuff around trying to learn and make sure we have the right human pairings,” Johnson stated. “It’s a big jigsaw puzzle.”
Obviously, the team finds it a necessity to improve on their finishes in 2024. The No. 43 car led the way, placing a dismal 29th in the owners’ standings. The No. 42 team was the second-worst chartered car in 35th, on the heels of finishing 32nd one year prior.
One of the key components that Legacy is chasing next year is pushing ahead and spending more time building out its hot rods. When Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway rolls around in February, the team plans to be weeks ahead to avoid any last-minute scrambling.
Realism exists within Legacy higher-ups. Management knows that it’s not an overnight process to become one of the front-running teams in the garage; a work-in-progress where steady increments are feasible and evaluated.
“We have to measure ourselves against ourselves,” Campe said. “Everyone is in this sport to win races and compete for championships, but we also have to be realistic and understand the spot that we’re in and how competitive the series is.
“I think being 16th to 20th when it all shakes out would be an improvement for us and something to build on for the next two to five years.”
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Canter is excited about the opportunity that presents itself. Though the team has hurdles to overcome, 2025 is a unique moment “to help create Jimmie’s vision of what he wants this to be.”
Canter added: “The first conversation I had with Jimmie — he asked me to come do this — and I was like, ‘What are your expectations; where do you plan on running? Because I can spend the next 10 seconds telling you that there are 24 cars you probably shouldn’t beat every week between how they operate and their preparations.’
“For us, it’s about hunkering down and putting our focus towards being in that conversation and making steps to doing that.”