How Trackhouse Racing and Owner Justin Marks Are Transforming NASCAR for the Better

• Justin Marks bought Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR operation last year and brought that team to full flower this season as Trackhouse Racing.

• Trackhouse has won two races with driver Ross Chastain and has pushed his teammate, Daniel Suarez, ever closer to his first Cup victory.

• Marks hired an Oregon-based branding company to create the team’s name, logos and general style and worked out a deal with international musical star Pitbull to join in ownership.

Over its 75-year history, NASCAR has had more than a few transformative figures.

• In the 1950s, Carl Kiekhaefer introduced first-class “team” racing to the sport, equipping his mechanics with identical uniforms and his cars with similar paint schemes.

• Beginning early in the 1960s, Richard Petty proved that one standout figure could bring droves of fans into racing.

• Darrell Waltrip crashed into the sport in the 1970s and changed the old-line dynamics of the sport, driving and talking his way into prominence.

• Jeff Gordon arrived in the 1990s and used racing talent and showbiz shine to take the sport into places it had never been.

And there are others.

Justin Marks might be the next name on that list.

Among other items of note, Marks is the first NASCAR team owner to fly to Switzerland in an attempt—which ultimately proved successful—to recruit a former Formula 1 champion to drive in the Cup Series. In August, at Watkins Glen International, Kimi Raikkonen is scheduled to drive a car owned by Marks’ Trackhouse Racing team as part of Trackhouse’s new PROJECT91 program. Marks plans to offer occasional Cup rides to drivers of international standing as part of the PROJECT91 plan.

Raikkonen’s first Cup start (he ran Xfinity and Truck races in 2011) will be an unusual moment of sorts for NASCAR, but Marks’ grand plan is to normalize such things at the highest levels of stock car racing. A former driver now at the steering wheel of one of NASCAR’s most-watched teams, Marks has big ideas and doesn’t appear afraid to put them in motion.

He bought Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR operation and brought that team to full flower this season as Trackhouse Racing. In what must be considered one of the top breakout seasons in recent NASCAR history, Trackhouse has won two races with driver Ross Chastain and has pushed his teammate, Daniel Suarez, ever closer to his first Cup victory.

Surprisingly to many, the Trackhouse Chevrolets have been up front consistently in the first half of the season. In Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, Suarez and Chastain combined to lead 189 of the race’s 413 laps.

None of this was expected at the start of the season. Chastain and Suarez had shown promise prior to 2022, but neither had a Cup victory and neither was projected to be on the playoff grid when things get serious in September.