Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Front Row Motorsports Announcement | Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Front Row Motorsports announced today that Noah Gragson will be joining the team for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season. The team held a press conference today to discuss the signing. Following is a transcript of the on stage remarks.
BOB JENKINS, Owner, Front Row Motorsports – “We’re pretty excited to announce that Noah Gragson will be joining us at Front Row Motorsports for next year in 2025 and beyond. We’re super excited. Noah is a guy who has been successful on every level of racing he’s ever been in and we’ve just watched him grow over the last couple of years in the Cup Series and we believe he’s just starting to scratch the potential of what he can do. This wouldn’t be possible without the support of Ford and Ford Performance and just the partnership that they’ve given us. Without being a tier one Ford team, we could never, ever think about signing a driver like Noah and just so excited to see what we can do together with Ford Performance and with Noah.
“The other thing I would say about Noah that really impressed me. We sat down when we met and talked is how much respect he has for this sport. He really understands it’s a fan-driven sport. He just relates so well with fans. He’s only been in this series a couple of years but he’s already become one of the most popular drivers. We really think that translates with our marketing partners to what we can do and achieve, so we’re just super excited about what the future holds for Noah and so glad he’s going to be with us for several years.”
NOAH GRAGSON, Driver, Front Row Motorsports in 2025 – WHY DID YOU WANT TO JOIN FRONT ROW MOTORSPORTS? “It’s definitely exciting times. When we started out this year I didn’t know how I was gonna run. I didn’t know if I had the potential to run in the Cup Series just based off how the 2023 season went, and to be able to get my feet underneath me with the opportunity at Stewart-Haas it definitely opened peoples’ eyes and with the challenges that have come about with Stewart-Haas, we were looking for a home for a long time and that’s when I got introduced to Bob and Jerry and being able to sit down with them and talk and see what their goals were and what their vision was. The thing that stuck out in my mind most importantly is what Jerry said when we met was Bob’s goal is grow each and every year and through the experiences that I’ve had in the last several years, it’s been fun to challenge myself and there are challenges and adversity along the way, but during that building process I really enjoy that time to step up as a leader and help grow the organization. With Bob’s vision of wanting to become better and better each and every year, it seemed like the right place. He’s obviously very financially invested in the team. There are a lot of great partners over there and they want to grow and build and his investment into a third charter, he wants to expand this thing. Bob, I appreciate the opportunity and I’m excited to get to work next year.”
THIS ALLOWS YOU TO STAY WITH FORD PERFORMANCE. HOW ADVANTAGEOUS WILL THAT BE? “Ford and Ford Performance have been a family from the top down. Everybody involved, whether it be Pat, Jeannee, Mark, everybody that’s involved on the Ford Performance side it’s been a lot of fun developing the relationship with them throughout this year. We’re only halfway through the year and they feel like family to me. We’ve had a lot of fun times together. The other drivers in the Ford group. the Ford camp, they’ve been really fun to work with, especially on the superspeedways. We’ve run pretty good there too. The Ford horsepower under the hood. The Robert Yates engines have been great, so it’s been a lot of fun working with the Ford camp and I can’t wait to continue to grow the relationship there.”
WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU BRING TO FRONT ROW? “That’s probably a better question for my peers to answer, but, for me, I feel like people are the most important thing and being able to bring a group of people together and change the atmosphere of a building is important to me. If you can get everybody pulling the same rope and working hard together and making an atmosphere that people want to come to work, when you get to week 20 or week 30 of this Cup grind that’s when times are tough. It’s easy to fire off with a lot of excitement throughout the year, but if not everybody is working together on week 20, this deal is a grind and it’s challenging. You’ve got to create that excitement and bring energy to the shop, so I feel like I could probably bring quite a bit of energy to the atmosphere of Front Row and I’m really looking forward to it.”
HOW MUCH HAS THE UPTICK IN PERFORMANCE AT FRONT ROW THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS MADE YOU WANT TO JOIN THEM? “It’s definitely been eye opening. They’ve run good, Michael and Todd, obviously run good. Layne has been running good in the Truck Series, so coming in I’ve been teammates with Todd in the past and being able to work with him. I think we can build our chemistry. He’s learned a lot of stuff throughout the years since we’ve been removed from the Kyle Busch Motorsport days. I don’t know who the third driver will be, but I’m sure we can all work together and come together and have success on the racetrack. Like I said earlier, Bob’s vision is to keep on growing and become better each and every year. This deal has been going since their start, so with that being said, Michael and Todd’s performance on the racetrack has definitely been eye opening. It doesn’t go unnoticed, not only myself but I think everybody in the garage. The Front Row Motorsports guys have speed throughout the weekends, each and every weekend, so they also have an alliance with Penske, so having that and being able to rely on the teammates over there with all their drivers, I think it’s all thumbs up for me.”
HOW WILL IT BE TO WORK WITH TODD AGAIN? “Todd and I have been racing each other for probably the last 10 years, dating back to the K&N West Series. He was in the 16 car for Bill McAnally and we were racing for Jefferson PItts Racing and we had some fierce battles on the racetrack. We became teammates over at Kyle Busch Motorsports and it’s gonna be nice to be able to rekindle that relationship on the racetrack as teammates now. It’s been a few years in between, but I think from all of our learnings from the past organizations that we’ve both been at, we can definitely work together and help each other to become better.”
JERRY FREEZE, General Manager, Front Row Motorsports – WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT NOAH’S PROGRAM FOR NEXT YEAR? “It’s a big day for Front Row and we’re really excited to have Noah join the team. He brings a lot of enthusiasm across the board, not just with his driving talent, but from what I understand of how he’s worked with the groups that he’s with, whether it be road crew guys, pit crew guys, marketing people, whatever, so we’re really excited to kick it off today and get started with Noah joining our team and really adding an exciting element to our group.
“We’ve got some holes to fill still with Noah’s team. We’re pretty close on figuring out who the crew chief is and some of the main parts of it. There’s still another driver to be determined at Front Row, but we’re zoning in on that, so we’re leaving it a little loose of who is in what car number and it’s just trying to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit just right, but I think we’ve got a pretty good idea of where it’s all going and we should be able to announce it all real soon. But again, just touching on Noah, we’re just excited to have him join our group and having the partnerships that we can bring to the table, there are some partners what will be coming along that we’ll announced at a later date, and also new relationships to be forged over the year. I’m excited to have him here. He’ll be with Front Row on a multi-year deal. Touching on the relationship with Ford. We’ll continue that. We’re a Ford team for the foreseeable future and with this alliance with Team Penske it has us in a tier one platform. It’s the first time Front Row has been in that place in our 14 years with Ford, so it’s starting to show up on the racetrack with more consistent speed in our race cars. I know in talking to the leadership at Team Penske about Noah joining our team, they’re just as excited about it as we are and what he can bring to the group every Sunday at the racetrack. I’m really looking forward to 2025. There’s still work to do in ‘24, but really excited where the lineup is going at Front Row with the youth we have in Todd Gilliland really coming into his own this year, with Noah kind of in a similar place in his career. Layne Riggs driving our truck is the future for Front Row and I think we’re gonna have another exciting piece to the puzzle here in the next few weeks.”
WHAT DID THE TIMELINE LOOK LIKE TO GET NOAH ON BOARD? “I don’t know. I remember talking to his people in early May, I think, kind of when some of the buzz was going around about Stewart-Haas. I think at the time he had a multi-year commitment with Stewart-Haas that was still to be determined, so we didn’t really have any real serious dialogue at that point, but we definitely conveyed that we were very, very interested if he were able to get freed up. Once Stewart-Haas made their formal announcement, we were certainly really aggressive because he was our number one player on the board, so to speak.”
WHAT ROLE IS NOAH PLAYING IN DETERMINING ADDITIONAL PERSONNEL THAT WILL BE PART OF THE RACE TEAM? “As far as crew chief, spotter and things of that nature, a hugely significant role. Those are relationships that are kind of like marriages and you can’t just force two people together. You’ve got to make sure they want to work together, so I think that’s something that we’re on the same page with. We’ve just got to put it all together and I think we’re pretty close on that.”
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES KNOWING YOU’LL HAVE THREE CARS NEXT YEAR? “I think the biggest challenge you have is communication. We’ve tried three cars at Front Row in the past. I’ve been a part of three car teams in prior times and the biggest challenge I see that I want to try to address right from the start is you always seem to get two teams that line up pretty good together and there’s third team that’s kind of the red-headed stepchild of the group. The crew chief doesn’t get along with the others because the other two are buddies, so we’re gonna have three teams under that roof. They’ve all got to get along. I think it starts with the drivers. If the drivers, and having Noah and Todd with a prior relationship is hugely important. If they’re on the same page, it’ll be a lot harder to keep secrets from each other, so we’ll work really hard on the communication piece. I think the parts and pieces, we’re way ahead of it. We’re gonna be in a good place. We’ve kind of figured out shop space, so I think we’ve got the groundwork laid to make it all work.”
WHAT’S THE TEAM’S RECEPTION BEEN TO NOAH JOINING THE GROUP? “We told the team this morning and there was a lot of enthusiasm about it, for sure. Noah is a likeable guy, for sure, and brings a big personality to the team and an energy and I think people are just excited to know that filling the void of Michael McDowell leaving is hard without a doubt, so Noah coming in – somebody that people are excited about, kind of a very different personality than where Michael is in his life, I think, has brought a real spirit to the shop and I think people are just excited to get to know Noah and get to work.”
WAS NOAH THERE AT THE SHOP? “No, he’s still doing his full-time job right now. He had a sim session this morning, so he couldn’t make it. We’ll have to bring him over later.”
BOB JENKINS CONTINUED – WHAT IS A COMMONALITY BETWEEN THE DRIVERS WE’VE SEEN OVER THE YEARS AT YOUR ORGANIZATION? “I just think they’ve been really close. Michael has been a great mentor to Todd. They race well together. They work well together. That’s probably the thing I’m most proud of is just the culture. It’s a close-knit group and I think the thing that Noah brings is just a level of excitement. He’s just got contagious energy. Anybody that’s spent five minutes around him can see that. I remember being at Talladega one time and seeing a guy going down the boulevard on a scooter. I’m like, ‘Who is that guy?’ That’s Noah Gragson. He’s just one of those, for whatever reason people just relate to him and he relates well with them.”
AS YOU LOOK AT GOALS OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS, WHERE DO YOU SEE THIS TEAM GOING? “Without knowing exactly who is going to be driving our third car it’s hard for me to say everything, but I think this is what you can expect. I think you’re gonna have three young but experienced drivers that their youthful but they’ve gotten that first couple of years out of the way. I think people will look at Front Row Motorsports and say, ‘This is a team that could be together for a long time.’ So, the thing I’m most excited about with Noah is that he’s not even really hit his ceiling. He’s still growing in this sport and getting better every week and I’m just excited to see where it goes.”
