(Photo: Trish McCormack | The Podium Finish)
LINCOLN, Ala. — After winning the Daytona 500 in February, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. comes to Talladega Superspeedway with an extra step of confidence. The 35-year-old from Olive Branch, Mississippi is hungry for his second win of the season to solidify a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Stenhouse’s Daytona 500 victory was no fluke. His first Cup victory came at Talladega in 2017 before following it up with a win in the summer Daytona International Speedway race.
“It’s cool to be back at the site of your first win, especially after starting your season off with a win on a superspeedway. Just bringing some confidence in that hopefully we can do it again,” Stenhouse said. “This race track is really wide. It’s four lanes wide pretty comfortably, so it’ll be interesting to kind of see if we can get more than two lanes going. At Daytona and Atlanta, it seems like those two lanes were about all we could get going. Hopefully, we can get at least three so we can start making moves and get up through the field when we need to. But feeling really confident coming in.
“Three lanes is tough because you’ve got guys that want to either be on the top or the bottom. The middle works really well for a while, but it is a little bit more risky, at least at Daytona and definitely at Atlanta. Here at Talladega, three-wide is super easy to do.”
Since winning the opening race of the 2023 season, Stenhouse hasn’t skipped a beat. He’s placed in the top 10 in three of the last four races, highlighted by a fourth-place finish two weeks ago on the Bristol Motor Speedway Dirt.
The only hiccup over the last month is a brake issue at Richmond Raceway that sent him behind the wall for 16 laps. Most recently, Stenhouse finished eighth at Martinsville Speedway.
“My career has been up and down, and I think you could probably talk to a lot of people in the garage that they’ve had ups and downs in racing,” Stenhouse said. “You just have to keep pushing through and have the faith that you can get it done. I feel really confident in where I am right now.”
(Photo: Sean Folsom | The Podium Finish)
Though Stenhouse’s No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing team has been firing on all cylinders, it’ll deal with a personnel change starting at Talladega. RFK Racing, who JTG leases its pit crew from, notified JTG that the organizations would be swapping entire pit crews.
Stenhouse said that the team specified in its contract with RFK that it did not want its pit crew taken under any circumstances. JTG originally made a gasman change before Martinsville last week and the team had efficient stops on pit road.
While Stenhouse knew that a switch could be possible, he said that it doesn’t make the decision any easier to deal with.
“I hate it for my guys,” Stenhouse said. “Obviously we went to battle with them and won Daytona with them. We had most of them all last year as well and just felt like we really had that good chemistry of a solid team together, and now that’s kind of all mixed up and gone away. So I hate it for those guys having to switch teams.
“I think the expectation going into it was that would not happen to us. I don’t really know what all the contracts and stuff look like, but that was kind of the mindset going in. I guess that’s what you get when you have the people over there running that place.
“I know that Mike (Kelley, crew chief) has talked to the new guys coming in and they’re super committed to showing what they’ve go.”
Stenhouse said he has familiarity with some of the incoming crew members, as he spent his first seven full-time seasons driving for RFK.
“I know a few of the guys on the team coming in that were on the No. 17 car and Mike Kelley (crew chief) has worked with some of those guys obviously with us both being over there,” Stenhouse said. “They had a really good pit practice this week. I feel really confident that I know Mike Kelley can get the most out of guys. Those guys have a little chip on their shoulders so that never hurts anything, as well. They want to show their worth and what they can do going over the wall.”
Sunday’s GEICO 500 is set for 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, airing on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Stenhouse will start 33rd.
