SCORE ONE FOR LITTLE GUY
Stenhouse’s victory Sunday in Daytona 500 a monumental achievement for driver, one-car team
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — One victory in 28 years was all tiny JTG Daugherty Racing had to show for the time, sweat and money the team had poured into trying to build a winning NASCAR organization.
The team, which is owned by Tad and Jodi Geschickter and former NBA player Brad Daugherty, entered its 29th season still committed to a driver stuck in a losing streak that stretched nearly six years.
But they believed in Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and so did the sponsors on the No. 47 Chevrolet, including grocery chain Kroger, a JTG partner for more than a decade. The trick was rebuilding Stenhouse’s confidence and returning him to the level of driver who had won two Xfinity Series championships at the start of his NASCAR career.
Would a Daytona 500 victory do the trick? Certainly so.
Stenhouse earned only the third Cup victory of his career by winning the longest Daytona 500 in history Sunday. He won in double overtime, under caution, to snap a losing streak that spanned 2,060 days and 199 races.
He did it with crew chief Mike Kelley, who took over leading the team during the offseason, in a reunion for the pair. Kelley was Stenhouse’s crew chief at Roush Fenway Racing for his Xfinity titles and spent one season as his Cup crew chief before stepping back into a supporting role for the last seven seasons.
‘‘Not winning since 2017 . . . to have somebody like Mike, who when he took over the reins as soon as the season was over, it was: ‘Hey, I know you can still get this done. We’ve just got to give you the right opportunities. We know if we give you cars capable of running up front, you can do that,’ ’’ Stenhouse, 35, said. ‘‘He believes in myself more than I do, I think, and that’s huge.’’
Stenhouse celebrated the victory by scaling the fence at Daytona International Speedway. Once he reached the top, he hung and did a pair of pull-ups before climbing back down to collect the checkered flag. Stenhouse’s only other two Cup victories came in 2017.
JTG is the first single-car team since Wood Brothers Racing in 2011 to win the Daytona 500, Jodi Geschickter is only the second female car-owner to win the Daytona 500 and Daughtery is the first Black owner to be part of a winning Daytona effort.
Daugherty had to leave the race early because the bright sun was bothering the lingering effects of recent eye surgery. But when his car went to victory lane, Jodi Geschickter said, Daugherty wasted no time reaching out to fellow North Carolina alum Michael Jordan, who, like Daugherty, is a part-owner of a NASCAR team.
‘‘He said that he and Michael Jordan are already talking trash,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m not sure what was said, but there have been conversations.’’
The ownership and sponsors could have bailed on Stenhouse at any time, and the sponsors could have bailed on winless JTG, as well. But that’s not how the Geschickters run their business, and they haven’t been doing this for nearly three decades to just give up.
‘‘We didn’t give up on Ricky because, personally, I feel like he’s got the spirit of a winner and I like what he represents as a person,’’ Jodi Geschickter said. “I see flashes of brilliance in what he does. I felt like he could do it. I felt like he could get the job done, and I never questioned that.’’
Stenhouse, who with the Daytona 500 victory qualified for the Cup playoffs for only the second time in his career, might not be a title contender, but he proved Sunday that JTG is headed in the right direction.
‘‘We work hard,’’ Jodi Geschickter said. ‘‘The guys do their jobs. We’re prepared. We’re prepared every day. We don’t quit. We’re tenacious. We dig in. You get the information, you try to make good decisions and you just don’t quit.’’