By Sarah Handy, Staff Writer
NASCAR Cup Series driver Corey LaJoie is coming off his best season in the series and recently he signed a fresh contract to stay with Go Fas Racing.
Here at Kickin’ the Tires we take a look at LaJoie’s 2019 season, as well as his newly signed deal in preparation for the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season and the road ahead with being back with Go Fas Racing.
There were rumors that Cole Custer may join the organization but there were also rumors that St. Hilaire wanted to keep LaJoie in his No. 32.
The Custer rumors proved to be just that as LaJoie re-signed with Go Fas Racing in December.
The deal is a one-year deal as 28-year old LaJoie embarks on his second full-time season at NASCAR’s highest level.
Last month, LaJoie stated, “I’m ultimately super excited to go back.”
With Daytona upon us shortly, LaJoie is coming off of two solid finishes at the 2.5-mile superspeedway in 2019 with finishes of 18th in the season opener last season and sixth in July.
Importantly, LaJoie’s sixth place finish in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 proved to be his best finish of last season.
As a matter of fact, the 2019 season marked the first time in LaJoie’s career that he ran the full Cup schedule and it was a very good one statistics wise.
Furthermore, in 36 starts, LaJoie earned the first two top-10 finishes of his Cup career, in addition to four Top-15 and 12 Top-25 finishes.
In addition, LaJoie’s average finish made a positive turn around from his 2018 campaign. In 2018, his average finish sat at 31.5 and following the 2019 it stood at 25.9.
It should be noted, that throughout last season, LaJoie often used the hashtag stacking pennies on the social media platform Twitter which is his equivalent of expressing small victories for the team that weekend.
“If we are stacking pennies that’s just a small victory every week. We’re not going to be stacking dimes or quarters like some of these bigger teams. The penny stack is not speeding on pit road or beating two out of the three Front Row cars or even beating a JTG car,” said LaJoie.
As can be seen, things look bright for Go Fas Racing heading into the 2020 season as the team previously announced a technical alliance with Stewart-Haas Racing.
“2020 will be an exciting year at GFR with the addition of SHR cars and their technical assistance,” said St Hilaire in a team press release back in November.
“I can’t thank all of the great people at SHR for the opportunity to align with them. All of this couldn’t happen without the help of our wonderful sponsors and marketing partners. GFR has improved every year in our six years in the NASCAR Cup Series and I believe that the best is yet to come for this little team and our great group of employees.”
Additionally, Go Fas Racing announced on Tuesday that Ryan Sparks was officially named as crew chief for LaJoie for 2020.
Sparks makes the move from Richard Childress Racing and Austin Dillon’s No. 3 team where he served as a race engineer.
All things considered, look for Corey LaJoie and Go Fas Racing to improve greatly upon their successful 2019 campaign LaJoie and the No. 32 team will see tracks for the second and some even third time around. Therefore, they will have data from last season to look back on and compare to 2020 data as it’s accumulated.
Generally speaking, with Go Fas Racing’s newly formed technical alliance with Stewart-Haas Racing that should most certainly make a positive difference next season.
Not to mention, the addition of Sparks sitting atop the No. 32 pit box.
Last but not least, the NASCAR Cup Series season kicks off with the 62nd annual Daytona 500 from Daytona International Speedway on February 16 at 2:30 p.m. ET live on Fox.