JTG Daugherty Racing to downsize from two cars to one in 2022
The team, co-owned by Brad Daugherty, had been running No. 37 car without a charter in 2021
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1 min read
The yin and yang of NASCAR Silly Season dictates that while certain teams expand and seek to upgrade, others downsize and seek to consolidate their resources. The latter is what's happening at JTG Daugherty Racing, as one of their two race teams will go kaput at the end of the 2021 season.
Speaking Tuesday on a media conference call, JTG Daugherty Racing co-owner Brad Daugherty -- a Cleveland Cavaliers legend and lifelong race fan -- stated that the team would not seek an additional charter for the 2022 season and instead downsize to one full-time car in the NASCAR Cup Series.
This season, JTG Daugherty had been running the No. 37 Chevrolet driven by Ryan Preece full-time without a charter, NASCAR's equivalent of a franchise that guarantees a car a spot in each race. The No. 37 debuted in 2017 as a team car to the No. 47 the team has fielded for over a decade.
"When we started out, I had a good buddy who told me about 10 years ago … 'If you have one bad race team, why have two? It just makes it even more difficult,'" Daugherty said, per Dalton Hopkins of Frontstretch.com. "We want to be a really strong one-car race company, and that's what we're going back to next season."
As reported by Fox Sports earlier this year, the No. 37 team's deal for their charter expired following 2020, with the charter they had been using going to Spire Motorsports. The No. 37 has run as an "Open" car in each race this season, meaning that it is not guaranteed a spot in each race and is not entitled to the financial bonuses available to chartered teams. Preece has earned a career-high four Top 10s this season, scoring a season-best finish of fifth at Daytona last week.
While Preece has driven for JTG Daugherty since 2019, his team's plans for 2022 make his already uncertain future even murkier. While both Preece and No. 47 driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are nearing the end of their current deals, Stenhouse is the driver of the team's flagship car and indicated in a June story by David Smith of NBC Sports that contract extension talks were "soon" to begin.
