{"id":98933,"date":"2024-11-27T07:26:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=98933"},"modified":"2024-11-27T07:26:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:26:02","slug":"nascar-silly-season-continues-with-crew-chief-shakeups-and-a-third-rfk-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/nascar-silly-season-continues-with-crew-chief-shakeups-and-a-third-rfk-car\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Silly Season Continues With Crew Chief Shakeups and a Third RFK Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NASCAR<\/h2>\n

Teams are making moves looking towards the 2025 season.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

With the NASCAR Cup Series season over, you’d expect things to calm down a bit. Apparently, there was still plenty of time to announce some new driver and crew changes over the past week before everyone got stuffed with Thanksgiving turkey.<\/p>\n

First up, let’s talk about Ryan Preece<\/strong>. The star of the East Coast short track scene hasn’t made much of a splash in NASCAR’s top series, but he hasn’t exactly had the best equipment in the garage. As the last remaining Stewart-Haas driver without a ride for next year, his move to the new RFK Racing #60 car was about the worst kept secret in the sport over these past few months. It’ll be interesting to see what he can do behind the wheel of a decent car.<\/p>\n

No disrespect to the dearly departed Stewart-Haas Racing, but it was clear that they were lacking speed over the past two seasons across the board. Both Brad Keselowski<\/strong> and Chris Buescher<\/strong> had some seriously good runs in 2024, with Keselowski making the playoffs and Buescher narrowly missing them.<\/p>\n

Preece will also have some major backing as well, with Kroger moving their sponsorship from Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and JTG Daugherty Racing (currently in the process of rebranding to Hyak Motorsports) to RFK Racing as a primary sponsor on Preece’s #60 car as well as associate sponsorships for the #6 and #17 cars.<\/p>\n

Other big news involved a shakeup of two well-known driver\/crew chief pairings. Over at Joe Gibbs Racing, Denny Hamlin<\/strong>‘s long-time crew chief Chris Gabehart<\/strong> will move into a role as competition director. Meanwhile, Ty Gibbs<\/strong>‘ crew chief Chris Gayle<\/strong> will move to the #11 car.<\/p>\n

Over at 23XI racing, a team co-owned by Hamlin, Bubba Wallace<\/strong>‘s crew chief Bootie Barker<\/strong> has been replaced by Brian Denike<\/strong> according to Frontstretch<\/strong><\/a>. Barker secured two wins for Bubba since 2021 and seemed to be building momentum for the #23 team. However, it’s clear from this move that better results were expected, with Wallace’s teammate Tyler Reddick<\/strong> making his way to the Championship 4 this year. Barker will remain with the 23XI team in a technical role. We certainly hope this isn’t the last we see of Bootie – he’s a beloved figure in the garage and one of the more entertaining scanner channels to listen to on race day.<\/p>\n

Photo: Sean Gardner\/Getty Images via Frontstretch<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teams are making moves looking towards the 2025 season.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":98934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470],"tags":[127],"class_list":["post-98933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/bootie.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-pJH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98933"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98936,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98933\/revisions\/98936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}