Spire Motorsports 2 driver line-up announced Corey LaJoie and Ty Dillon for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Season
Lajoie, 31, will be returning to the team for the third year in a row. He ranked his 31st in the points standings and scored a career-best 5th place in his March 20 race at his speedway in Atlanta.
He also led a career-best 19 laps in the No. 7 Chevrolet during the July 10 race in Atlanta before crashing out in a battle with Chase Elliott on the final restart.
This will be the fifth consecutive season in NASCAR’s premier series for LaJoie, who has five Top 10s in 197 Career Cup starts. Ryan Sparks remained chief of his LaJoie crew and was also promoted to the team’s competition director. Sparks and LaJoie joined Spire in 2020 as a duo after he paired up with GoFas Racing.
Welcome @tydillon to the team #Spire Motorsports In the 2023 season, he will participate as a full-time driver for car No. 77!
Welcome to Team Ty.we are very happy to have you here @CoreyLaJoie We finished 7th and look forward to what we can achieve together next season. pic.twitter.com/QURLYL2htg— Spire Motorsport (@SpireMotorsport) October 18, 2022
“I’m confident that we can have another year on the note with the new car and have a solid season and take our first win,” Rajoy said in a release. “I’m happy to have my buddy Ty on board as well. It’s great to have a full-time teammate at number 77.”
Dillon, 30, will join Spire Motorsports after spending the 2022 season driving Petty GMS Racing’s No. 42 Chevrolet. He was ranked 29th in the points standings and finished a season-best 10th in the Bristol Motor Speedway Dirt Race.
The 2023 season will be Dillon’s sixth full-time on the Cup circuit. He competed in Germaine his racing from his 2017 to his 2020 and finished his career-best 3rd place in the race held at Talladega his Superspeedway on October 4, 2020. did. Kevin Bellicourt, who has been crew chief of his No. 77 at Spire for the past two seasons, will be his chief of crew at Dillon.
In 199 Cup starts, Dillon has two Top 5s and seven Top 10s. In 2017 and 2019, he finished 24th, a personal best. Dillon also has three wins in his World Trucks series (he finished second in the 2013 rankings). He won his race at Indianapolis on July 26, 2014 at his motor speedway in Xfinity as a rookie in his series, finishing in the top five for three consecutive seasons. .
Dillon said in the release, “I am grateful for this opportunity. It is a new beginning with a very hungry team and I am excited for the future.” Looking at the way it has grown to be a force, year after year, the organization is heading in the right direction and I am thrilled to be part of taking No. 77 to where Corey used to run it. Hopefully together we can raise the overall level of competition.”
For the first time in history, Spire Motorsports will have two full-time drivers. The team started his 2019 Cup Series season with eight drivers splitting time in his No. 77 Chevrolet. Justin Haley scored his team’s first victory in a rain-shortened race at Daytona International Speedway on July 7, 2019.
Lajoie became the first full-time driver last season, with the team expanding to a second full-time car shared by four drivers in 2022.
Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson said in a statement: “We knew we needed to learn how to crawl before we could walk and finally try to run. This is a testament to the people at Spire Motorsports and Corey Rajoy, Ryan Sparks and Kevin Vericourt are the foundation of this organization.
“The next step in our progress is to add a full-time driver of equal ability to the No. 77 team, and we have found someone named Ty Dillon. (Fellow TJ Puchyr) and I have not been typical the way we got here today.We have great respect for our contemporaries in sport and to be among them. All in all, over the last 20 years we have been fortunate enough to have many functions and roles in racing that give us what it takes to be successful in this highly competitive environment. We are very proud that every member of the organization helped us build it.”
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