Editor’s note: Today’s Front Row Motorsports preview continues NASCAR.com’s countdown of team previews for the 2026 Cup Series season.
FRONT ROW MOTORSPORTS
Manufacturer: Ford
Engine: Roush Yates Engines
Driver-crew chief pairings: Noah Gragson-Grant Hutchens (No. 4); Todd Gilliland-Chris Lawson (No. 34); Zane Smith-Ryan Bergenty (No. 38)
Team outlook: Continuity will be key to improvement in 2026 for Front Row, which turns the page after a year of transition. FRM entered last season with two new faces in Gragson and Smith, who joined forces with Gilliland as the organization expanded to a three-car outfit. Results were mixed, with just three top-five finishes (one for each driver) over the course of the year, but the foundation of the team’s lineup is mostly intact, as are aspirations of returning to the postseason after a two-season drought.
NOAH GRAGSON, NO. 4 FORD
Experience: 2 full-time seasons in NASCAR Cup Series; 111 starts
2025 stats: 34th in final Cup Series standings; 0 wins, 1 top five, 3 top 10s, 0 poles, 7 laps led
Driver outlook: Gragson is back for a second season in the No. 4 Ford, but with a new face atop the team’s pit box. Longtime race engineer Grant Hutchens will take the helm from Drew Blickensderfer, starting his first full-time crew chief role in the Cup Series. He’ll be working toward establishing a better performance baseline with the 27-year-old Gragson, who absorbed eight crash-related DNFs last year, a contributing factor to his total of just 16 lead-lap results in 2025 — next-to-last among Cup Series full-timers. His brightest spot last season was a fourth-place effort at Talladega in April; expect the superspeedways to be a place for potential positives until the pairing builds chemistry.
TODD GILLILAND, NO. 34 FORD
Experience: 4 full-time seasons in NASCAR Cup Series; 144 starts
2025 stats: 27th in final Cup Series standings; 0 wins, 1 top five, 5 top 10s, 0 poles, 23 laps led
Driver outlook: Gilliland enters 2026 again as the most-tenured driver at Front Row, though he’s the youngest of the trio at just 25 years old. His most recent campaign represented steps forward in some ways (a career-best 20.8 average finish, plus a career-high second place at Talladega in October), but steps back in others (a five-spot drop in the final Cup Series standings and leading 107 fewer laps than the year before). Achieving his own performance upswing and assuming a leadership role will be crucial for the team’s composure.
ZANE SMITH, NO. 38 FORD
Experience: 2 full-time seasons in NASCAR Cup Series; 81 starts
2025 stats: 28th in final Cup Series standings; 0 wins, 1 top five, 5 top 10s, 1 pole, 22 laps led
Driver outlook: Smith’s first career pole position (at Talladega in April) stands as a highlight from last year, but so does a third-place finish at Bristol and top 10s at Phoenix, Michigan and Atlanta. The Cup Series progress has been measured so far for Smith, who delivered a Craftsman Truck Series championship to Front Row in 2022 and returned to the organization’s Cup side last season. Finding more gains on those first-year highlights — in whatever increment, and on an array of track types — will be a necessity for the No. 38 team.