JR Motorsports will attempt to make its NASCAR Cup Series debut next month, announcing Wednesday that the organization will bid for a starting spot in the 2025 Daytona 500 with reigning Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier behind the wheel.
Allgaier will drive the No. 40 Chevrolet in his effort to qualify for the “Great American Race” on Feb. 16 (2:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The entry is a collaboration between JRM and 10-time Grammy Award-winning musician Chris Stapleton with Traveller Whiskey serving as the sponsor for the No. 40, representing the blend utilized by Buffalo Trace Distillery to make Traveller. Greg Ives will serve as crew chief for Allgaier.
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“It’s been really special,” Allgaier told NASCAR.com. “To be at an organization like this and to be able to make a team debut at the Daytona 500, that’s special. Obviously, we have to qualify our way in. We have a lot of work to do. It’s going to be difficult. But there wouldn’t be anybody that I’d rather tackle this opportunity with than [JRM co-owners] Dale [Earnhardt Jr.] and Kelley [Earnhardt Miller] and LW [Miller, JRM director] and everybody at the race shop.”
“We’ve been waiting for the right moment for JR Motorsports,” Earnhardt Jr. said in a press release. “With Justin winning the Xfinity Series Championship and Chris Stapleton’s undeniable star power, the planets aligned for this perfect opportunity to enter this year’s Daytona 500.”
See y’all in Daytona. pic.twitter.com/iCvILhtw1W
– JR Motorsports (@JRMotorsports) January 15, 2025
The Cup Series effort will be a first for JR Motorsports, which has fielded entries in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for nearly 20 years. Earnhardt Jr. — who runs the team with his sister, Kelley — said as recently as last season that a Cup Series venture had been a long-running interest, either by bringing in financial support to field a chartered team or as investors in an existing team.
“It was a conversation that Chris and Mr. [Rick] Hendrick were having,” Kelley told NASCAR.com regarding the partnership with Stapleton. “And of course, Mr. Hendrick knows what we’ve talked about over the last several years about wanting to potentially Cup race. So he passed the opportunity over to us and told us to take the reins and see what we could do with it. So we were able to land it and put it together.”
“There’s nobody like Justin who knows our organization, who knows our needs, who can meet those needs and really deliver for this partner all year long,” Kelley told NASCAR.com. “So it was just really the perfect storm. You know, you had a partner that was interested and excited and wanted to be at the Daytona 500 and you had a team in JRM with a driver like Justin who wants to be there.”
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Allgaier led the organization to its fourth Xfinity Series Championship triumph under the JR Motorsports banner last year. The title was a popular and long-awaited first for the 38-year-old veteran, who finally hoisted the trophy at Phoenix Raceway in his seventh Championship 4 appearance.
Allgaier has twice competed in the Daytona 500, making appearances in 2014-15 for former team owner Harry Scott Jr. The most recent of his 82 career Cup Series starts came in last season’s Coca-Cola 600 when he drove Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 5 Chevrolet to a 13th-place finish as a substitute for Kyle Larson.
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“To be the person that is making the debut on the Cup side, that’s a warm, fuzzy feeling, right?” Allgaier said. “It’s something that you can never go back and get your first opportunity back. You can never go back and do things over again. This is truly the first.
“Internally, it puts more pressure on myself. I want to see myself succeed. The first goal is to make the race. As an open, non-charter team, we have to go make the race. Then you switch your focus to, ‘If we make the race, how do we go win the race?’ I’m not showing up to go run 30th, right? We’re going there to try to have an opportunity to win the Daytona 500. What a story that would be if we could just go there and win. I don’t know that that’s in the cards or not, but it would be really, really special. Regardless, I’m honored to be the person that gets to drive this car.”
Contributing: Cameron Richardson | NASCAR.com