Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s 2013 arrival in the NASCAR Cup Series was accompanied by a considerable amount of hype and hoopla. The then-25-year-old former sprint car racer from Olive Branch, Mississippi, was a hot commodity.
He was coming off of consecutive Xfinity Series championships for Roush Fenway Racing when he got the call to replace first-ballot NASCAR Hall of Famer Matt Kenseth, who left the Roush stable to drive for Joe Gibbs Racing.
But Stenhouse’s first full season at NASCAR’s premier level proved to be a struggle, and he didn’t score his first top-10 finish until the regular season finale at Richmond Raceway. Stenhouse capped his rookie campaign with a trio of top-10 efforts, highlighted by a podium finish during the fall visit to Talladega Superspeedway. Ultimately, his performance was good enough to capture the Sunoco Rookie of the Year award, ahead of Danica Patrick and Timmy Hill.
Stenhouse spent more than a decade with the organization now known as RFK Racing until team owner Jack Roush brought 2015 Xfinity Series champion Chris Buescher back into the fold. Stenhouse shifted to the No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing entry in what was essentially a driver trade between the two companies.
“I look back at a lot of things I’ve learned and look back at my Cup career; I feel like I was fighting an uphill battle,” Stenhouse recalled. “You saw (Kenseth) and Carl (Edwards) bail out of (Roush), leaving me, Trevor (Bayne) and Greg (Biffle) hanging on. Now, when I talk to Brad (Keselowski) about some of the things he sees over there and how he turned that place around, it gives me a little more of a comfortable feeling of what I was challenged with. I feel like I can put that in the past and reset over here.”
Stenhouse enjoyed immediate success with JTG, claiming the pole for the 2021 Daytona 500. Two years later, he won The Great American Race and the No. 47 team remained consistent throughout the 2023 campaign, ending the regular season 17th in the series standings.
A key component to Stenhouse’s success in the No. 47 Chevrolet is veteran crew chief Mike Kelley. It was Kelley who called the shots during Stenhouse’s reign over the Xfinity Series in 2011 and 2012, collecting eight checkered flags and placing inside the top 10 in 52 out of 67 races.
“I think he just brings confidence to me,” Stenhouse said. “He keeps that in perspective for me. I also feel like he’s a good team leader and gets the best out of all the guys, not just me: our pit crew, road crew, shop guys. Everyone loves working for him and going the extra mile for Mike. I think that’s important in this garage, especially now that the cars are so close to each other. Our guys, we have all the scanners and things at the shop, so we’re pushing just like everyone else. If it’s not right, those guys aren’t going to send it out the door. I think that’s from the leadership of Mike, and he’s got his hands on the car and in the shop with them because we have 20 people working on this car. That helps as well in the way he runs a race team.”
Reports swirled throughout the 2024 season that there would be an ownership change at JTG Daugherty Racing, the team with which Stenhouse has scored two of his four Cup Series victories. Kroger was moving its sponsorship to RFK Racing, and longtime team owners Tad and Jodi Geschickter planned to enjoy a new phase of life.
Gordon Smith, a businessman who quietly became the team’s principal owner in November 2023, stepped up and assumed a more prominent role alongside minority team owners Mark Hughes, Ernie Cope and NBA great Brad Daugherty. Under Smith’s guidance, JTG Daugherty Racing was rebranded Hyak Motorsports. In Chinook Jargon, a trade language of the Pacific Northwest, the word “Hyak” means fast. From the competition side, everything remained intact from the previous regime.
“Still got the same guys working on the car, same processes, same team meetings. Literally, nothing on the competition side has changed, even from 2023,” Stenhouse stated. “I think 2024 was a big off year for us. We were four or five spots worse than we thought we should have been based off the year before. We’re still scratching our head at why that was. I think we were struggling for speed in 2024; we struggled on the execution side, finishing races where we should or capitalizing on other people’s mistakes and not finishing as high as we should. Over the offseason, we sat down as a group and said, ‘The one thing that we can control once the race starts is execution and no mistakes.’ That is what we focused on at the start of the year – and even now, it’s just execution. Coming up with strategies, different gameplans as the race goes to get the best possible finish out of the car. Everything on the competition side stayed the same, which made the transition easy. It’s not moving into a brand new shop, all new people, totally different. That has helped the transition be seamless on the competition side.”
At a performance deficit due to a lack of manufacturer support, Stenhouse has remained patient. Through 17 races this year, his average starting position failed to meet expectations, but he had put together a series of solid finishes despite multiple midseason dustups with the No. 77 Spire Motorsports entry driven by Carson Hocevar.
“We pay Hendrick (for support),” said Stenhouse. “A lot of our guys have been at other teams that were manufacturer teams in the past, and we do know there is a lot of information that we don’t get. I tell my engineers all of the time that it’s easy for me to get frustrated like, ‘Come on, why can’t we get our car faster,’ but we’re doing it as a one data-point team every weekend. When we go out to practice, we will make a run and I’ll come back in and we’ll make a decent sized change just so we have two data points. If you have a four-car team, if every one of them makes one or two adjustments, they have eight, 12, 16 data points to hone in on what they need for that given weekend. We’re out there on a little life raft doing our thing. On one hand, it’s cool because everyone knows what level of support each team has. There are a lot of people that respect what we’ve done this year in the garage. That is important to me and Mike Kelley, when you have other people in the garage come up and talk about the job that we’re doing, knowing the support that we have.”
Funding isn’t an issue for Hyak Motorsports and Stenhouse vows that the No. 47 team doesn’t lack resources, though it has had to make piecemeal deals with numerous companies to fill out its sponsorship portfolio. Stenhouse also has his own partners that he brings to the table with NOS Energy Drink and SunnyD.
Smith is willing to add money out of his own pocket if needed, which stings for Stenhouse as he’s a World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series team owner and doesn’t like spending his personal money to support the race team.
“Hyak doesn’t lack in spending money,” Stenhouse confirmed. “It’s spent in the right places as far as keeping our equipment looking nice, taking care of our employees. We’re not cutting corners. We’re a full race team, it’s just we’re doing it with – when I say limited resources, it’s not on the funding side or the spending money side – it’s on the information that we have coming in the door. That is frustrating at times; knowing if we had more information I feel like we could run a lot better. You have to remind yourself that when you’re running 10th, 15th, you’re beating a lot of good cars that have that information coming in.”
Sponsorship is still significant as racing at any level will never be cheap. But once a sponsor commits to Stenhouse, the driver takes pride in going above and beyond to keep them happy.
“The problem with a team like us is we don’t have that manufacturer money coming in the door, so everything we run on is based off what sponsorship is on the car,” Stenhouse explained. “We can’t give discounts on price-per-race versus a big team that is getting $5 million to $10 million from a manufacturer. Everything that we’re running on is sponsorship or out of Gordon’s pocket. I own a sprint car team and I hate getting into my pocket to run it, but that’s what you have to do sometimes to be a race team owner. So far, we’re doing a decent job of keeping the sponsorship rolling in and once we get them in, I think they are happy.”
Regardless, Stenhouse is enjoying another steady season in the No. 47 Chevrolet. He’s comfortable running for the single-car operation and admits it’s been hard to remain patient – though it is a trait he’s worked on as he’s aged – and let the race play out. Stenhouse is proud to know the rest of the Cup Series garage is paying attention to what the No. 47 team is accomplishing.
“There are definitely times where we’ve overachieved,” said Stenhouse. “At the same time, the times we’ve had good cars, we’ve executed at a high level and got good finishes and good points. I feel like we’ve overachieved on a handful of races where we might be a 28th-place car on speed and we finish 18th. Those are the days that make or break a season for a team like ours is when you can take that 27th-, 28th-place car on speed or average running position and finish 17th, 18th; that’s 10 spots, 10 points. If you can do that multiple times throughout the year, now you’re gaining 50 points from where you would have been on your average running position. You still have to take care of it when you have good race cars. For me, it’s about finishing races and getting as many points as we can without tearing the race car up and making more work for my guys. That seems to be paying off really well for us.”
