Did You Notice? … Rumors broke through Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern this week that an ownership shakeup could occur at JTG Daugherty Racing next season.
The NASCAR Cup Series operation has been owned by Tad and Jodi Geschickter and NBA legend Brad Daugherty since 2009; primary sponsor Kroger has been with them nearly the entire time.
Who knows what will happen with the No. 47 Chevrolet, last year’s Daytona 500 winner, as NASCAR Silly Season ramps up this summer. Here’s what we do know: the car driven by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was the only single-car operation to make the playoffs last season. Stenhouse entered the Round of 16 the biggest underdog of all drivers battling for the championship and failed to make it past the first round, finishing dead last (16th) in the final standings.
JTG’s postseason bid was the first for a single-car outfit since Matt DiBenedetto and Wood Brothers Racing in 2020. Could it also turn out to be the last?
NASCAR has suffered a long, slow decline in single-car teams since Jeff Gordon broke through and won the championship for Hendrick Motorsports’ multi-car operation in 1995. That started a race for others to copy its successful “bigger is better, teamwork” format, from the old Robert Yates Racing operation learning information sharing to the Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske powerhouses we see today.
The result has been a tectonic shift in power within NASCAR. No single-car operation has won the title since Dale Earnhardt in 1994; the only “independent” type team that’s broken through is Furniture Row Racing in 2017 with Martin Truex, Jr. For most of its existence, FRR was a single-car operation based out in Colorado, although it won the title during the lone year it housed a second, full-time car driven by Erik Jones.
But it only took a year after that title bid for the whole FRR operation to shut down due to a lack of corporate sponsorship. Today, there’s just a handful of single-car teams remaining on the NASCAR circuit within the 36 chartered programs.
| 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Organization | Number of Chartered Cars |
| Hendrick Motorsports | 4 |
| Joe Gibbs Racing | 4 |
| Stewart-Haas Racing | 4 |
| Spire Motorsports | 3 |
| Team Penske | 3 |
| Front Row Motorsports | 2 |
| Kaulig Racing | 2 |
| Legacy Motor Club | 2 |
| RFK Racing | 2 |
| Richard Childress Racing | 2 |
| Rick Ware Racing | 2 |
| Trackhouse Racing | 2 |
| 23XI Racing | 2 |
| JTG Daugherty Racing | 1 |
| Wood Brothers | 1 |
The only other single-car program, the Wood Brothers, has struggled throughout the course of 2024,…
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