A Consistent Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Grows With Hyak Motorsports

Forbes

8 hours ago

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 47 NOS Energy Chevrolet, walks onstage during driver intros ... More prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway on June 01, 2025 in Lebanon, Tennessee. (Photo by)
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is known for his on-track aggression, and each of his four career Nascar Cup Series wins are because of exactly that.
But the 37-year-old racer, now in his 13th Cup season, is still searching for consistency. His small Hyak Motorsports is one of the biggest underdog stories in the entire sport. With less than 30 full-time employees and a lack of major tech support, the little team that could does plenty.
When Stenhouse won the 2023 Daytona 500, it literally sent shockwaves throughout the garage.
This year, the team formerly known as JTG Daugherty Racing underwent an ownership change. Jodi and Tad Geschickter, who first formed an Xfinity Series team in 1995 and debuted a Cup car in 2008, left the ownership group. Gordon Smith took over as principal owner, with NBA legend Brad Daugherty remaining as a minority owner. Mark Hughes and former Nascar crew chief Ernie Cope also joined the ownership group.
'Nothing has changed on the competition side," Stenhouse said. "My team has stayed the same with my engineers and shop guys. I think that's what helped us get off to a hot start. We focused this offseason on what we needed to get better at from last year.
'Executing was pretty high on the list. We still need to get our speed better. But even when we had cars that weren't as we needed them to be, we worked the system with strategy, good restarts and just came out with good finishes.'
At the same time, the newly coined Hyak Motorsports had to hunt for a new sponsor. Kroger left the team to partner with all three drivers at RFK Racing, marking a major shift for the No. 47 car, which had worked with Kroger since 2010.
But the new ownership group has done a great job at marketing the No. 47 car and its driver. Major partners have joined the team or expanded previous packages, such as SunnyD, Rate, Martin's Famous Potato Rolls, betr, Real American Beer, NOS Energy, Hungry Jack, Fun Pops and several other firms.
'The toughest part of switching the brand is you lose all of the office people who handled that side of things,' he explained. 'We put new people in place. We've had great [partners] come on board. We're looking to build our partners at our race team. Everybody's been really pleased about what we've been able to do for them.'
Right now, Stenhouse's goal is to get the team back into the playoffs. After 18 races, he sits 21st in the regular season standings and likely needs a win in the final eight events before the playoffs begin to qualify for the postseason.
'It would be huge,' Stenhouse, who's qualified for the postseason twice, said. 'It's tough to do in the sport, especially as a single-car team. We have 24 employees that work on this thing. It would be huge for our company.'
But even with the loss of a major corporate sponsor, Stenhouse's performance has stabilized. He has an average finish of 18.9, which is second behind his best with the No. 47 team (17.8 in 2023). If he didn't have some tough luck, he'd likely be right around the playoff bubble. He was 13th overall in the standings through the Coca-Cola 600 in late May.
'Mike Kelley [crew chief] and I have been working really hard together to dissect our races to see where they went wrong,' Stenhouse said. 'We're trying not to put ourselves or our car in bad positions before the end of the race. That's helped us out a lot this year.'