Iowa native Brett Moffitt returned to the NASCAR Xfinity Series this past weekend at his home track of Iowa Speedway — a track he believed NASCAR would never return to.
In what is so far just a one-off for Joe Gibbs Racing, Moffitt worked his way up from a 31st starting spot to inside the top 10 before he had an unscheduled pit stop that relegated him to an 18th-place finish. The 2015 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year is also competing for TRICON Garage in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he won the 2018 championship, this year on a part-time basis. He’s already run two races, finishing fifth at Kansas Speedway and 15th at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Moffitt cut back to a part-time schedule for 2024 after running full time for AM Racing last year and competing in the majority of the Xfinity schedule the past four years.
Frontstretch caught up with Moffitt prior to the Iowa race to talk about his decision to go part time this year, Iowa’s return to the schedule, his departure from AM and more.
Watch or read the interview below.
Michael Massie, Frontstretch: How did the deal with Joe Gibbs Racing come about to run for them at your home track?
Brett Moffitt: Honestly, it came about — we kind of sat down with our sponsors at the beginning of the year and asked them what they wanted to do and what they wanted to be a part of. Whether they wanted to do more races with less quality or less races with more quality. Ultimately, we decided on the quality choice.
We started there, and then we started a game plan of where the openings are going to be and what would be the best opportunity. And thankfully, this opportunity with JGR opened up.
Yeah, undoubtedly, it should be my best equipment I’ve ever had in the Xfinity Series. Hopefully, we can run up front and have a shot at the win.
Massie: The No. 19 car this year has been really fast but had a lot of bad luck. How do you reverse that luck?
Moffitt: We just need to go have a clean day. We need to be there at the end to have a shot at winning. Obviously, there’s a big question mark with the repave and how that’s gonna race. You gotta go into it with an open mind and be willing to learn and search around throughout the race.
One big help is Ty Gibbs qualifying second last week. That gives us a really good pit selection, which is huge. So yeah, we just gotta go execute.
Massie:…
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