In part two of our Q&A with Steve Lauletta (find part one here), the 23XI Racing president discusses the way the NASCAR Cup Series team operates and does business, the new shop and lessons he learned from his long motorsports career.
Danny Peters, Frontstretch: You recently announced a new HQ for 23XI Racing What will that give you in terms of growth?
Lauletta: We’re hoping to break ground in the coming weeks with the goal to be in the new shop for the start of the 2024 season. Right now, we’re in two separate buildings. We rented one building as a one-car team, and when we became a two-car team we took the sister building next door. So we’re not very efficient. There are people with offices over there [in the other building] so we have to go back and forth. We’ll tear down cars over there and have to bring them back over here and we’re limited for office space.
Denny [Hamlin, co-owner] has a vision for building a race shop to this new form of NASCAR racing with the ways the cars are from a single-source supplier standpoint, less being machine shop-type places and building it to this new model. Making it a place that is comfortable and an inviting place to come to work not just a big shop of bending metal and hundreds and hundreds of thousands square ft. It’s going to be a really special place for all of us to go to work, allowing us to be more efficient.
And hopefully we can keep building. To be big enough for us to grow as an organization to be three or four cars, who knows down the road? But we have a hard time in doing more here, so it gives us a runway.
Peters: Any plans for an Xfinity car? And is it cost sustainable?
Lauletta: I don’t know. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. No, at this point we’re focused on Cup racing. We’re focused on this plan to become even more competitive on a consistent basis and potentially growing in the Cup Series, so no talk about it at this point.
Peters: Any chance of Hamlin in a third car with his own team next year with his contract up at Joe Gibbs Racing this year?
Lauletta: That would be a Denny question. I don’t see that happening. … I know he’s very happy at JGR and he’s got his whole Cup career history there and he’d like to keep seeing that move forward, but I’m not involved in his driving. He’s driver Denny down the road and he’s owner Denny for us here at 23XI.
Peters: Was it a weird moment for you seeing Hamlin chase…
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