How Trackhouse flipped the script on NASCAR’s powerhouses

America’s biggest form of motorsport, NASCAR, is very traditional. There’s a staid way of doing things and, even if the unexpected occurs every now and then, the rule of thumb is that the powerhouse teams always win.

What doesn’t happen is a start-up operation arrives at its top level, bragging a co-owner who’s a Grammy Award-winning megastar. It then buys an entire team from one of American racing’s most successful owners, just a matter of months into its debut NASCAR Cup season, and puts both its cars into the Playoffs at the first proper attempt a year later.

Subsequently, it makes the Championship 4 decider thanks to its driver Ross Chastain deliberately driving into a wall at top speed and creating an internet sensation that even Formula 1 champions were wowed by – and it found time to run Kimi Raikkonen in a one-off third car! None of this should happen. But, as they say at Trackhouse Racing, ‘Why not us?’

Its leader is Justin Marks, the son of a tech company guru who was an early investor in GoPro digital cameras. Marks Jr is a decent road racer – he scored a win for Chip Ganassi Racing in NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series at Mid-Ohio in 2016, and he was a winner too in IMSA Sportscars with Meyer Shank Racing’s Acura NSX GTD squad in 2019.

But his business calling is sports marketing, which Marks studied at California State University, and his passion project has quickly taken NASCAR’s Cup Series by storm. He brought music star Pitbull (Armando Perez, aka Mr Worldwide) on board to join industry veteran Ty Norris, and together they’ve played the NASCAR game like nobody else.

“I love it,” eulogizes Marks. “I love this company, I love Trackhouse, and I want it to be successful. The story that we’ve been writing this year, we’ve had great moments. We’ve had dramatic moments. We’ve brought great partners on. We’ve got two great race car drivers sitting in our race cars.

“I wanted this more than I’ve wanted anything professionally in my life ever, and I’ve taken massive personal risk to start this company. I believe in it more than I’ve believed in anything.”

Justin Marks bought his team from Chip Ganassi and has turned it into a regular winner

Photo by: Trackhouse Racing Team

It’s clear from talking to leading lights around the sport that newcomer Marks, 41, is highly regarded. Rick Hendrick says he’s “done an unbelievable job”; Joe Gibbs believes Trackhouse’s rise has been “fantastic”; perhaps the most telling commendation came from Roger Penske’s trusted lieutenant, Walt Czarnecki: “I’ve never seen a team come into the sport as well prepared as Trackhouse. When I listen to [Marks], he’s all about business. I think he’s not unlike us in that respect.”

Trackhouse made its debut in the 2021 Daytona 500 as a single-car effort run out of a corner of Richard Childress Racing’s shop. Its driver, Daniel Suarez (the former Xfinity champion and only non-American regular in the series), ended his race after just 13 laps with the front of his Chevrolet Camaro torn up by the muddy infield after he couldn’t avoid the first big wreck of the day. Marks shrugged it off as “the first step of a thousand-mile journey”.

Mexican Suarez, who previously drove with powerhouse teams Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing, admits his career had “hit rock bottom” before Trackhouse came calling. But he immediately connected with Marks’s ambition.

"Having a four-car team, being a part of a powerhouse, has disadvantages as well as advantages. In those teams, there are four steps of cars, and if you’re not in one of the best ones in terms of people pushing in the same direction, it can be tough" Daniel Suarez

“In reality, it doesn’t matter about the team you’re with – if you don’t have the right people pushing you to be competitive, and having your best interests [at heart], it’s very tough to be successful in NASCAR,” says Suarez. “Having a four-car team, being a part of a powerhouse, has disadvantages as well as advantages.

“In those teams, there are four steps of cars, and if you’re not in one of the best ones in terms of people pushing in the same direction, it can be tough. But from the outside, people only see the banner of the big-team name.

“When I came to Trackhouse, everything was just a piece of paper. Justin has been successful as a racing driver and a businessman, and he said, ‘We’re going to bring this to the next level and we’re going to be the new strong racing generation in NASCAR.’ When he looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You have to trust me on this’, I got a gut feeling that it was the way to go.”

Early-season results were as expected for a satellite RCR car – “It’s no secret, we were their third priority,” says Suarez – with regular top-20 results but nothing special. Then came the first-ever Bristol dirt race in March 2021, and opportunity knocked: Suarez led 58 laps and finished fourth. The NASCAR world was put on notice.

Suarez led laps on his way to fourth in the 2021 Bristol dirt race, the first emergence of Trackhouse as a player

Photo by: NASCAR Media

Despite his wealthy family background, Marks was taking a huge financial risk. He didn’t have a NASCAR ‘charter’ – the ticket to an automatic starting spot at every Cup race within its franchise system. Marks reflects that time was “scary… I mean, uncomfortable, just not knowing if it was going to work”.

“I don’t have a big corporation, a big business behind me to where my race team can be kind of my fun project or anything like that,” he explains. “I come from a place where I have an opportunity, a very successful family, and I have a dream that I can chase. Just about everything that is available to me in my life because of those circumstances, I pushed into Trackhouse.

“This was it. This was all the chips in. If this didn’t work, to be honest with you, there wasn’t a ton to fall back on. We didn’t have much sponsorship. I didn’t know where I was going to get my charter from or how I was going to make this work.”

What he did have was a smart plan: NASCAR was bringing its all-new car, the Next Gen, on stream in 2022 – and this was the true target for Marks. It promised to level the playing field, forcing the big teams (and their manufacturers) to throw away their years of notes and data, while bringing cost containment to help with the business model of fielding cars.

This was spawned by the failure of NASCAR’s last small hero story: Furniture Row Racing. Against the odds it won the title as a Gibbs satellite team, with Martin Truex, in 2017. But this fairytale had a nightmare ending: Gibbs ratcheted the price tag for its equipment and, as the bills piled high, owner Barney Visser fell ill and shuttered the team just a year later.

It sent shockwaves around NASCAR HQ – the sport’s costs were out of control and FRR’s death was a very public one. Next Gen was its legacy, so it’s fitting that Trackhouse has jumped into that underdog role.

“Honestly, Trackhouse is a thing because of this Next Gen car,” says Marks. “I know that obviously we’ve got some growing pains. But the parity that it’s allowed in this sport is why Trackhouse has this opportunity. So if I go back to the day that I decided to start this thing, it was really because of this race car, because if we’re all playing with the same ball, then it truly becomes about the team.

“I believed in my ability and the management of Trackhouse’s ability to cultivate a workforce culture where we could take advantage of a car that is the same as everybody else’s and go compete with teams that have more money than us, that have more depth than us, that have more people than us, and this is proof of concept for the whole vision of the Next Gen car.

“NASCAR deserves a tremendous amount of credit, because there’s no denying that it has added an element of uncertainty, drama and excitement that I think this sport hasn’t seen in a long time, and Trackhouse is here for all of it.”

The arrival of the Next Gen car has turned Trackhouse into a regular contender, with both Suarez and Chastain winning races in 2022

Photo by: Rusty Jarrett / NKP / Motorsport Images

As well as Next Gen, Marks grabbed another opportunity after he baulked at the cost of NASCAR charters – which topped eight figures each. Heck, for huge numbers like that he could… buy an entire team! He called Chip Ganassi, his old team boss, and they struck a deal. Trackhouse now had a home, the two charters that came with it, plus an extra hundred or so staff to play its hand properly as a two-car effort.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Chip,” says Marks. “There’s a tremendous element within Trackhouse that was built under his leadership. We have 65% of our workforce [that] was at Chip Ganassi Racing. Chip built this building that we’re in. So he’s taken the ride with us.”

"I wouldn’t want to be doing this with anybody else. Trackhouse is exactly where I’ve wanted to be. I feel like we hit our stride early with the speed, but it just didn’t falter" Ross Chastain

And what a ride it was this year: Chastain, who Trackhouse retained from Ganassi, took the team’s first Cup win at COTA after a typically ballsy and contact-packed last-lap pass, and repeated at Talledega in another thrilling last-gasp finish. Suarez scored his first career win at the top level at Sonoma, and both qualified for the Playoffs, exceeding Marks’s target of one car making it.

Between them they scored 21 top-five finishes. While Suarez dropped out in agonizing fashion at Charlotte, due to a power-steering failure when well placed to transfer, Chastain made the Championship 4 with his wild Martinsville divebomb that went viral. Third place in the season finale at Phoenix was good for second in points, with both cars inside the top 10 – the only non-powerhouse team to do so.

“I wouldn’t want to be doing this with anybody else,” says Chastain. “Trackhouse is exactly where I’ve wanted to be. I feel like we hit our stride early with the speed, but it just didn’t falter. This is just the beginning. I’m genuinely happy – for some reason, it’s not that I’m complacent in second, but I feel good.”

It’s been the feel-good story that NASCAR was looking for. Now Trackhouse’s sustained challenge at the very top of the sport will be the next real test.

Suarez's victory at Sonoma meant both he and Chastain made it into the Playoffs, with the latter finishing second after making the Championship 4

Photo by: Lesley Ann Miller / Motorsport Images

Will the Iceman return?

Trackhouse Racing made more headlines in the summer when it gave Kimi Raikkonen his Cup Series debut in its ‘Project 91’ third car at Watkins Glen.

Raikkonen, who raced almost 100,000km in Formula 1, hadn’t driven a racing car in anger in the 251 days since the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The 2007 F1 world champion only got a couple of hours in a Next Gen test car at Virginia International Raceway beforehand, so the fact that he qualified back in 27th was no surprise. In a wet/dry race, however, he charged up to 14th before pitting for slicks.

In the second stage, he peaked in eighth before pitting again, which put him back in the pack but on a promising fuel strategy to contend for a top 10. Sadly, he got caught up in someone else’s crash and whacked the tyre wall, ending his day and injuring his wrist.

“I was very impressed with Kimi,” says teammate Suarez, who helped him through the testing process. “I wasn’t surprised. I was actually expecting him to do well, but it was good to see how disciplined he was.

“He didn’t come here in vacation mode to have fun; he came here to be competitive as well as having a good time. He studied hard, we spent some good time together in the simulator, he was getting bold with the car. He’s a very talented race car driver, I knew he’d get up to speed, but that takes a little bit of time with these cars. For the amount of time that he did in the car, he did a very good job.”

Justin Marks has gone on record as saying the ride is Raikkonen’s “until he tells me otherwise”. After his debut, the Finn said “we’ll see”.

“I hope he comes back,” adds Suarez. “I think he will, just for the challenge. He didn’t finish the race the way he wanted to, or how he deserved to. If I was him, I’d do it again.”

Insight: What next for Raikkonen after his NASCAR Cup debut?

Raikkonen impressed many on his Cup debut at Watkins Glen despite a DNF

Photo by: Jasen Vinlove / NKP / Motorsport Images