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By pgordon September 20, 2024
Team, Hoosier-State Native to Jump Start 2025 Campaign at Kansas Speedway
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 20, 2024) – Who says you can’t go home again?
Spire Motorsports has agreed to a multi-year contract with Justin Haley to drive the team’s No. 7 Chevrolet in the NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) beginning with next weekend’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Haley will take over the controls of the No. 7 Chevy Camaro from Corey LaJoie, who will swap rides with him and finish out the 2024 season in Rick Ware Racing’s No. 51 entry.
Haley, a native of Winamac, Ind., made his NCS debut for Spire Motorsports on April 28, 2019 at Talladega Superspeedway and picked up both his and the team’s first win – an upset of practically unprecedented proportions – less than three months later in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 behind the wheel of the No. 77 Chevrolet Camaro at Daytona International Speedway.
Haley is a veteran of all three of NASCAR’s National Touring Series and began his career racing at the national level in the ARCA Menards Series when he was just 15-years-old.
Since then, he’s gone on to amass 294 total starts across NASCAR’s Cup, Xfinity and CRAFTSMAN Truck Series.
At 25-years-old, Haley has collected four NASCAR Xfinity Series checkered flags and three NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series wins, making him one of just 41 drivers in history to have earned wins across all three of NASCAR’s National Touring Series.
“Justin Haley is extraordinarily talented and we’re thrilled to welcome him back home and to have a young driver of his caliber behind the wheel of Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Chevrolet beginning next weekend at Kansas Speedway,” said Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson. “We’re grateful to our friends at Rick Ware Racing for teeing up the idea of a trade between Justin and Corey as the 2024 season winds down. We think this is a great opportunity to get a head start on 2025 and to get Justin acclimated so we’re ready to put our best foot forward next season.
“This moment doesn’t come without some reflection, and as I’ve said all along, Corey LaJoie is and will always be more than a driver to us. He’s an incredible person, a great father, dependable teammate and mediocre media mogul. He’ll always be family. He deserves this new opportunity with an emerging team and allowing them to take another step forward in their trajectory. Again, just a win-win all around.”
Haley is a veteran of 136 Cup Series starts and has notched one win, five top fives, 15 top 10s and led 98 laps in NASCAR’s premier division.
While many drivers, native to the Hoosier State, pursue careers in the open wheel ranks, Haley was drawn to stock cars and made his mark on the national stage in his early teens.
After making his maiden ARCA Menards Series start in May 2014, he turned heads by recording his first pole position and top-three finish one race later. Haley earned four top 10s that season and would secure his first win two seasons later in just his 13th start on the ARCA national tour.
Haley made six CRAFTSMAN Truck Series starts from 2015-2016, before joining the series full-time in 2017, following his 18th birthday. He notched the first of three 2018 wins in June at World Wide Technology Raceway and went on to visit Victory Lane later that season at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Texas Motor Speedway prior to finishing the season third in points.
He shifted his full-time focus to the Xfinity Series in 2019, earning four-top five and 20 top-10 finishes enroute to a 12th-place finish in the season-ending points tally. He further cemented his pedigree that same season with the upset NCS win at the “World Center of Racing.”
“Spire Motorsports gave me my first few starts in the Cup Series,” said Haley. “My first was in the No. 77 at Talladega on my 20th birthday. We had a lot of great runs in our first year together in 2019, and there’s still a lot of familiar faces around there who were on the team back then. I’m excited to come home. This is where I got my start in the Cup Series, and I’m excited to go out there and compete with the (crew chief) Ryan Sparks and the No. 7 team. The next seven races will give us nice head start and a baseline for next season.”
He continued to prove his mettle in 2020 when he earned three Xfinity Series wins between Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona before closing out the season with a third-place points’ showing. A year later, he would win again at Daytona to compliment nine top fives and 24 top 10s. He finished 12th, third and sixth, respectively in Xfinity Series points from 2019-2021, amassing four wins, 23 top-five and 65 top-10 finishes.
Since 2019, he’s logged 136 starts in NASCAR’s premier division, recording five top fives and 15 top 10s. He has driven Rick Ware Racing’s No. 51 entry to a pair of top 10s this season. Haley has paced the field for 25 laps and completed 99.2 percent of the laps contested in 2024.
In July, Spire Motorsports announced Rodney Childers, a 40-time NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race- winning crew chief and one of the sport’s most respected tacticians, will lead Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 team beginning in 2025.
Childers, 48, led Kevin Harvick to the 2014 NCS championship and is the winningest active crew chief in NASCAR’s premier division. The Mooresville native called 37 wins from 2014 – 2023. Prior to the over three dozen victories with Harvick, Childers is credited with leading drivers David Reutimann and Brian Vickers to Victory Lane.
“Having someone like Rodney behind you and supporting you on the pit box is one of the biggest motivations you can have as a driver and a team,” said Haley. “I’m really looking forward to working with Rodney. He brings a lot to the table, especially for a younger driver like me. He had lots of success with Kevin (Harvick) for several years, and I feel like we have similar aspects to each other. I’m looking forward to seeing what he has to say and how he approaches a race weekend. Obviously, every crew chief prepares and executes the weekend differently, so I’m ready to absorb all I can from him.”
About Spire Motorsports …
Spire Motorsports is a NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race team co-owned by long-time NASCAR industry executives Jeff Dickerson and Thaddeus “T.J.” Puchyr. In 2024, Spire Motorsports campaigns the Nos. 7, 71 and 77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1s in the NASCAR Cup Series with drivers Corey LaJoie, Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar, respectively. The team also fields the Nos. 7, 71 and 77 Chevrolet Silverados full time in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series. An all-star driver lineup will rotate throughout the 2024 season in the No. 7 Chevy. Rajah Caruth drives the No. 71 entry and Chase Purdy rounds out the team’s fleet of Silverados in the No. 77.
Spire Motorsports earned its inaugural NASCAR Cup Series victory in its first full season of competition when Justin Haley took the checkered flag in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway on July 7, 2019. Less than three years later, William Byron drove Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Chevrolet Silverado to its inaugural NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series win on April 7, 2022, at Martinsville Speedway. The team’s most recent win came on April 12, 2024, when Kyle Busch took the checkered flag in the SpeedyCash.com 250 at Texas Motor Speedway.
