If you tuned into the most recent NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, you might have seen a rather unfamiliar face up front, at least for 2024 standards.
That face was Grant Enfinger, who went on to lead 71 of the race’s 200 laps, most of which came in the first half of the race. It looked like he would go on to dominate the race and take his first win of the season.
The win would have been huge, but not so much for Enfinger. The 39-year-old has been to Truck Series victory lane 10 times, and has been a regular contender for the championship as recently as last season. While the win would have been his first this year, which would be special in and of itself for Enfinger, the win would have been much bigger for his team.
CR7 Motorsports, founded in 2014 as a K&N Pro Series East (now ARCA Menards Series East) team, was a mainstay in the ARCA Menards Series as a part-time team with Codie Rohrbaugh driving the No. 7 (hence the name CR7). The team moved up to the Truck Series with Rohrbaugh in 2018, running as a part-time team through 2022.
The closest the team got to victory was in 2020, when future driver Enfinger and fellow owner-driver Jordan Anderson drag-raced to the start-finish line in the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. Another 100 feet or so would have allowed Rohrbaugh to sneak through on the inside to nab a major upset.
The following year in 2021 was actually the first time Enfinger and CR7 worked together. Enfinger was demoted to a part-time ride with ThorSport Racing, so he joined CR7 for the rest of the races he was supposed to miss, only fully missing the Daytona road course. Enfinger was able to grab one top five and three top 10s, nearly matching CR7’s combined numbers to that point (two top fives and five top 10s pre-Enfinger).
In 2022, CR7 ran the full season with just one driver in Blaine Perkins, but couldn’t finish higher than 18th all year and even failed to qualify for a race at Martinsville Speedway. 2023 didn’t go that much better, even with a driver change from Perkins to Colby Howard. Aside from a fourth-place finish at Daytona, Howard only managed to finish in the top-15 twice more. That led to another one-and-done season for a CR7 driver.
With CR7’s search for a new driver came the news that GMS Racing, a longtime Truck Series powerhouse, would shut down at the end…
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