Spire Motorsports Ambetter Health 400 Race Advance

• In 20 NASCAR Cup Series starts at Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS), Spire Motorsports has logged two top-five and two top-10 finishes. Corey LaJoie earned consecutive top fives in the spiring edition (2022-2023) of the Cup Series annual visits to AMS in the team’s No. 7 Chevrolet. Spire Motorsports fields the Nos. 7, 71 and 77 Chevrolet ZL1s in the NCS with Justin Haley, Michael McDowell and Carson Hocevar, respectively.
• The Ambetter Health 400 from Atlanta Motor Speedway will be televised live on FOX Sunday, Feb. 23, beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The second of 36 points-paying races on the 2025 Cup Series schedule will be broadcast live on the Performance Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.

Justin Haley – Driver, No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet ZL1

• Justin Haley will pilot Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Gainbridge Chevrolet ZL1 in Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400.
• The Winamac, Ind., racer has recorded eight Cup Series starts at AMS and owns two top 10s at the circuit.
• In six appearances in NASCAR Xfinity Series competition at AMS, Haley did not finish outside of the top 10, and recorded a trio of top-five finishes.
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• In 26 appearances on drafting tracks, Haley has completed 5,135 of the 5,197 laps contested, which converts to 98.807 percent of laps completed.
• Last September, Haley made his return to Spire Motorsports and participated in the final seven events of the year aboard the team’s No. 7 Chevrolet, earning a season-best finish of seventh at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
• The four-time NASCAR Xfinity Series race winner is a veteran of 145 Cup Series starts and has notched one win, five top fives, 16 top 10s and led 103 laps in NASCAR’s premier division.
• In total, Haley has made 42 Cup Series starts for Spire Motorsports, with the bulk of races coming during the 2021 season behind the wheel of the team’s No. 77 machine. He made his first Cup Series start at Talladega Superspeedway on his 20th birthday.

Justin Haley Quote
How has Atlanta’s track surface changed, and how important is handling with multiple grooves now?
“I enjoy Atlanta. The track is really starting to wear, and I feel like now there are three distinct grooves. You really have to put an emphasis on making sure your car is handling good. After getting our first race out of the way, we can only get better. I like where the No. 7 team is at, and we are ready to get back out on the track.”

Atop the No. 7 Box – Crew Chief Rodney Childers

Crew chief Rodney Childers comes to Spire Motorsports after spending the past 11 seasons at Stewart-Haas Racing, leading the organization’s No. 4 team. The first 10 of those campaigns were with 2014 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Kevin Harvick.
Childers has called 28 Cup Series events at Atlanta, including two wins, five top-fives and nine top 10s. He led Kevin Harvick and the No. 4 team to victories at the Hampton, Ga., oval in 2018 and 2020.
The veteran crew chief has participated in 678 NASCAR Cup Series races where he’s earned 34 poles, 40 wins, 178 top-five and 298 top-10 finishes. He also earned 2014 championship honors with Harvick.
Childers’ 40 wins at NASCAR’s premier level are second-most amongst all active crew chiefs in the Cup Series garage.

Michael McDowell – Driver, No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet ZL1

• Michael McDowell will pilot Spire Motorsports’ No. 71 Group 1001 Chevrolet ZL1 in the Ambetter Health 400.
• The 40-year-old driver will pull double duty on the weekend, competing in Saturday’s Fr8 208 CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race. McDowell will drive the No. 07 Delaware Life Chevrolet Silverado with crew chief Allen Hart atop the pit box. He will be making his fourth-career CRAFTSMAN Truck Series start, and second in as many weeks.
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• McDowell owns 18 Cup Series starts at AMS, highlighted by one top five and two top 10s. He earned back-to-back Busch Light Pole Awards at the track last season.
• In last week’s season-opener at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, the No. 71 team navigated a late-race melee to secure a solid 11th-place finish. The Go Bowling Chevrolet clocked the fastest lap of the race at 45.169 seconds (199.252 MPH), earning a championship bonus point via the Xfinity Fastest Lap.
• The veteran, now in his 18th Cup Series season, aims for his third career playoff appearance (2021, 2023). After the 67th running of the Daytona 500, McDowell sits 14th in the driver standings.
• Across his first five qualifying attempts during the 2024 season, McDowell held an average starting position of 6.2, which included two front-row starting positions, second at Daytona and a pole position at Atlanta. McDowell’s lowest starting position in his first five races last season was a 12th-place qualifying effort at Las Vegas.
• McDowell marked his 500th career start at Martinsville Speedway last fall, a milestone he celebrated at the site of his first Cup Series start in 2008. Now 40-years-old and a father of five, McDowell is set to complete his 17th season competing in NASCAR’s premier division. To date, he has 502 career Cup Series starts on his resume.

Michael McDowell Quotes
How does the aging of the surface change each stop the series makes at Atlanta? Furthermore, how will running the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race on Saturday help you on Sunday.
“Atlanta will be a similar style to Daytona, but handling will still be a big part of it, especially in how you take those runs. I will have a good opportunity to learn the track this weekend in the Truck race on Saturday afternoon, so I’ll have some data and video to review. I’m going to be studying up and getting ready for Atlanta throughout the week at the shop. This is a big opportunity for us. Last year in the Cup race, it was my first career pole, and we sat on both poles at Atlanta. It was a really solid race for us. So, I am hoping to build on that and carry some momentum into the weekend to try and get both the truck and the No. 71 into Victory Lane.”

Atop the No. 71 Box – Crew Chief Travis Peterson

• Crew chief Travis Peterson joins Spire Motorsports after spending the past two seasons at Front Row Motorsports. He made the move alongside driver Michael McDowell.
• The 33-year-old led McDowell to a pair of Busch Light Pole Awards at Atlanta Motor Speedway last season.
• Peterson and McDowell combined for five pole positions at the six events contested at drafting tracks during last season. Two of those poles came at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Additionally, McDowell led the field to the green flag at World Wide Technology Raceway (Ill.) in June, giving the team six total Busch Light Pole Awards on the season – the most of any team last season.
• Peterson contributed to several victories during his tenure at RFK Racing, Hendrick Motorsports and JR Motorsports, highlighted by clinching the NASCAR Xfinity Series title in 2014 and racking up three Cup Series wins with Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and the No. 88 team in 2015.
• Peterson is a mechanical engineering graduate of the Williams States Lee College of Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The West Bend, Wis., native earned his degree in 2012.

Carson Hocevar – Driver, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet ZL1

• Delaware Life returns to Carson Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet ZL1 for the Ambetter Health 400 at AMS.
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• In two Cup Series starts at Atlanta, Hocevar has finished no worse than 19th. The 25-year-old racer finished 16th in the series’ most recent visit to the 1.54-mile drafting track last September.
• Hocevar also owns three NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series starts at Atlanta with a best finish of 16th coming in 2021, before the track was reconfigured to produce superspeedway-style racing.
• Last Sunday, the NASCAR Cup Series kicked off the 2025 season with the 67th running of the Daytona 500. Hocevar qualified 33rd but was dealt a tough hand early on with fuel pump issues on Lap 5. The No. 77 team adjusted strategy and fought to stay in the race, but Hocevar’s race ended with just five laps remaining, leaving him 30th in the final rundown.

Carson Hocevar Quotes
What is the craziness factor going from somewhere like Daytona to Atlanta the following week?
“I think Daytona is more unpredictable in my mind because the wrecks don’t happen from bad blocks anymore, they happen from bad pushes. At Atlanta, it’s more chaotic, and you can see the wrecks happening or that aggression starting to build up, so you can try to move around a little and avoid it. At Daytona you are just sitting a sitting duck. At Atlanta, you can kind of see things starting to form even if things are still happening quickly in the draft.”

Atop the No. 77 Box – Crew Chief Luke Lambert

• Luke Lambert has served in the crew chief role for 15 races at Atlanta. He led his driver to a top-10 finish three times – twice with Ryan Newman in 2014 and 2015 and once with Chris Buescher in March 2021.
• Lambert has collected 413 starts as a crew chief in the NASCAR Cup Series with a total of 28 top-five and 92 top-10 finishes, highlighted by a win with Ryan Newman at Phoenix in 2017.
• Lambert also led Newman to a second-place finish in the 2014 Championship standings on the strength of five top-five and 16 top-10 finishes.

About Spire Motorsports …
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 (Fla.) 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 (Va.) 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 in Fort Worth.

In 2025, Spire Motorsports will campaign the Nos. 7, 71 and 77 Chevrolets in the NASCAR Cup Series. The team will also field the Nos. 07, 7, 71 and 77 Chevrolet Silverados in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series and the No. 77 Chevrolet in the ARCA Menards Series in select events.