Spire Motorsports Shriners Children’s Race Advance

• In 22 NASCAR Cup Series starts at Phoenix Raceway, Spire Motorsports has logged one top-15 and three top-20 finishes. Carson Hocevar, driver of the No. 77 Chevrolet, earned a team-best 15th-place result in the series’ March 2024 visit to Phoenix. Spire Motorsports fields the Nos. 7, 71 and 77 Chevrolet ZL1s in the Cup Series for Justin Haley, Michael McDowell and Hocevar, respectively.
• The Shriners Children’s 500 will be televised live on FOX Sunday, March 9, beginning at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The fourth of 36 points-paying races on the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series schedule will be broadcast live on the Motor 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 Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
• The 25-year-old has recorded eight Cup Series starts and maintained an impressive 99.9 percent lap completion rate at the one-mile oval, registering 2,492 of the 2,501 contested laps.
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• The Winamac, Ind., native has competed in all three of NASCAR’s national series at Phoenix Raceway. In Cup Series competition, Haley scored a venue-best 17th-place finish in March 2022. He owns six Xfinity Series starts at the Avondale oval, earning two top-five and four top-10 finishes, and averaging a starting position of 9.2 and 10.5 average finish. Haley also notched one top 10 in three CRAFTSMAN Truck Series appearances.
• Last Sunday, Haley started 29th for the NASCAR Grand Prix from Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas and spent a majority of the first half of the event on the outside of the top 20. Refer to race report Haley battled a loose-handling Group 1001 Chevrolet on old tires in the closing laps, slipping to the 16th position before crossing the finish line.
• In total, Haley has made 44 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
What are your thoughts on Phoenix?
“Phoenix is always a fan favorite and that makes it fun for the driver. The track is so difficult and it’s tough to have a well-balanced car in all four corners and throughout the race. It keeps you guessing all weekend. I competed in the No. 7 at Phoenix last fall with Spire, so I’m excited to use what we’ve learned since then and continue building momentum.”

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.
• Crew chief Rodney Childers has 36 starts at Phoenix including three poles, five wins, 12 top-five and 23 top-10 finishes. His drivers have led a total of 1,238 laps at the one-mile Arizona oval.
• The 48-year-old called five victories with Harvick at Phoenix Raceway from 2014-2018. The pairing swept the 2014 races in March and November before returning to complete the three-peat in March 2015.
• The veteran crew chief has participated in 680 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 Workforce Chevrolet ZL1 in Sunday’s Shriners Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
• The Glendale, Ariz., native has made 28 attempts at his home track in Cup Series competition, scoring a pair of top-10 finishes the series’ three most recent starts at the circuit.
• The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Occupational Health and Safety Solutions (OHSS) firm will celebrate 30 years of protection across the 2025 season. The Workforce-sponsored machine will carry a special 30th-anniversary decal atop the deck lid throughout the season as the company celebrates three decades of protecting employees nationwide in work injury management, medical bill repricing, and employer services.
• Workforce Operational Health and Safety Solutions will return to the hood of McDowell’s No. 71 Chevrolet ZL1 at Richmond Raceway in August.
• Last week at Circuit of the Americas, McDowell rallied for an 11th-place result after a mid-race pit-road penalty forced the team to take an alternate strategy. Thanks to a caution with 15 laps remaining, the road course ace utilized fresh tires to advance 19 positions during the race’s run to the finish.
• Through the first three races, the 17-year Cup Series veteran owns three top-15 finishes, crossing the stripe in 11th on two occasions (Daytona and COTA). The No. 71 team sits eighth in the division’s championship point standings.
• In his first three starts under the Spire Motorsports banner, McDowell has collected 85 points. The feat marks the most points scored by a Spire Motorsports team through the first three races in company history.
• McDowell will throw out the first pitch prior to the Thursday, March 6 spring training contest between the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Dodgers at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Ariz. First pitch is slated for 3:05 p.m. local time.

Michael McDowell Quotes
What is it like returning home and racing in front of so many family members and friends?
“Any time you get to race in front of your hometown crowd, it’s fun. It’s great to see friends and family and catch up. It’s a long season, so having an opportunity to go home and see everybody is fun. The season is off to a pretty good start. We haven’t gotten all we wanted, but we’ve managed the races well and got ourselves sitting pretty good in the points. Our team is building some really great momentum.”

What is your anticipation like for this weekend’s events at Phoenix?
“It’s the first short track of the year, so no different than these first few races. This weekend, we will see where we end up and how we unload with a new car and package, which is almost a new kind of direction. Phoenix has been good for me in the past, but we are going into a new season with a new team with fresh eyes and outlook. I am looking forward to having a 45-minute practice, which will be great to run through some of the things we want to work on and get comfortable with our Workforce Chevrolet and the new package. I will enjoy the weekend and try to keep this momentum going. It has been a good start to the year, and we want to keep the momentum up through the West Coast swing. We know every week is a new challenge and opportunity, and so far, we’ve made the most of them.”

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 crew chief owns two top 10s at Phoenix Raceway, both coming with Michael McDowell behind the wheel.
• As a race engineer at Hendrick Motorsports, Peterson helped Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to his final Cup Series victory in November 2015 at the ceremoniously named Jeff Gordon Raceway.
• The West Bend, Wisc., native continued to boost the Hendrick No. 88 team in 2016, propelling Alex Bowman to his first-career pole award at the Avondale oval that fall. Bowman led 194 of the 324 laps, which stands as his career-high laps led mark to this date, and nearly claimed the victory en route to a sixth-place finish.

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

• Carson Hocevar will make his fourth Cup Series start at Phoenix Raceway in Sunday’s Shriners Children’s 500.
• The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year claimed a 15th-place finish in the March 2024 event and has finished inside the top 20 in his three previous starts.
• MINER makes their first primary appearance aboard the No. 77 Chevrolet ZL1 in this weekend’s event. Miner Ltd. is the leading self-perform, national service partner for smarter, safer loading docks and a division of OnPoint Group. As the premier expert in loading docks, commercial doors and more, Miner’s team of best-in-class service professionals help large-scale facilities and Fortune 500-class companies mitigate risk and improve efficiency. With over 400 service professionals in more than 40 markets, Miner is the only company of its kind with a coast to coast footprint, offering the largest self-perform network in the country for supporting all doors, loading dock products, vehicle restraints and safety products, HVLS fans, service, aftermarket and more. Miner also supports end users, general contractors, architects, and developers, from ground-up developments to tenant improvement or extensive remodels. Learn more about how Miner delivers speed, consistency and results at https://www.minercorp.com.
• The Portage, Mich., native owns five NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series starts at Phoenix, finishing in the top 10 in the 2021 and 2022 events for Niece Motorsports.
• Hocevar has finished within the top 20 in six of 12 events contested on tracks one-mile or less. His best finish was an eighth at the three-quarter-mile Richmond (Va.) Raceway.
• In the first three races of the 2025 season, Hocevar has an average finish of 15th. He earned a career-best finish of second at Atlanta Motor Speedway and followed that up with a fourth-place start and 13th-place result at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, last weekend.

Carson Hocevar Quotes
The No. 77 Spire Motorsports team has had a strong start to the season. How do you keep that going as the series moves on to a short track and an intermediate track in the coming weeks?
“This is where the real test starts and where we’ll see how we stack up against the other teams. We’ve shown that Spire Motorsports is committed to doing better and I think this past weekend at COTA, where all three of us were running in the top-half of the field, was a really good race for us. We’re improving as an organization and it’ll be interesting to see how that continues through the next few races.”

Atop the No. 77 Box – Crew Chief Luke Lambert

• Luke Lambert, crew chief of the No. 77 MINER team for Spire Motorsports, has called 22 Cup Series races at Phoenix dating back to 2013. Lambert led Ryan Newman to a win at Phoenix in 2017 and has collected four top-10 finishes with Newman and 21-time Cup Series winner Jeff Burton.
• In four Xfinity Series events at Phoenix, Lambert earned two wins and three top-five finishes. The first win came in March 2012 with Elliott Sadler and the second was 10 years later with Noah Gragson in March 2022. Lambert and Gragson started second and led 114 of 200 laps to earn their first of eight total wins in 2022.

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 Feb. 22, 2025, when Kyle Busch took the checkered flag in the Fr8 208 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

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.