The Upstart NASCAR Team Owner Behind Trackhouse's Success

Justin Marks was a Midwestern kid when he discovered his calling. His grandfather took him to local dirt tracks, and he was in awe of everything: the smells, the sounds, the action, the drivers. To him, they were almost like cowboys or ­daredevils—people defined by taking risks.

This story originally appeared in Volume 13 of Road & Track.

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Decades later, Marks, now 41, isn’t just a driver himself. He’s among the most important new team owners in NASCAR, and he believes he knows how to propel the sport into the future.

“NASCAR is probably in the most important inflection point in its history right now,” Marks says. “You could point to the decline in auto­mobile interest among young people, or the increase in Uber and DoorDash, and say that’s a bad omen. I think the opposite. As the automobile becomes less intrinsically connected to us, something like 40 cars going around a high-banked racetrack at 200 miles an hour will be unique and compelling.”

Marks, whose father grew businesses in Silicon Valley, signed up for Skip Barber Racing School as a junior in high school in California after a guidance counselor told him to think about what he wanted to do for a living. He fast-tracked his career from there, driving sports cars professionally in the early Aughts before moving to NASCAR, where he won a race in the second-tier Xfinity Series in 2016.

But Marks arguably made the biggest waves as his driving career wound down and he formed his own team, Trackhouse Racing, in the top-level NASCAR Cup Series. Trackhouse debuted in 2021 with pop star Pitbull as a co-owner [fig. 1]. Its drivers, Ross Chastain and Daniel Suárez, found success right away.

“As I got into my thirties, I was no longer on a trajectory that was going somewhere from a career standpoint,” Marks says. “I was just sort of funding rides with sponsorship.” That’s when he started thinking more about what the second season of his life in the sport would look like.

“I was waiting for that lightbulb moment, like, okay, this can be something I can devote myself wholly to and really do something special in the industry I love,” he says. “Then I heard NASCAR was going to this new car, the Next Gen car.”

The Next Gen car debuted in the Cup Series this year, marking a shift from NASCAR’s oval-­centric roots. It’s more like a sports car than previous generations, with a five-speed sequential transmission, an independent rear suspension, and 18-inch wheels, each fastened by a single lug nut. Cars share many spec parts. “The parts are all supplied by independent vendors or manufacturers, and the car is assembled and taken to the racetrack,” Marks says. “That’s what we did in sports-car racing for most of my career, so I told myself, ‘I know that car, and I know what it takes to be successful with that car.’ That’s when I really started thinking about diving into this Trackhouse project.”