Ricky Stenhouse Jr., JTG-Daugherty Racing Slayed the Giants with Daytona 500 Win

• JTG-Daugherty team co-owners Tad and Jodi Geschickter believed in their vision, their team and their 18 corporate sponsors (Kroger and Fortune 500 top share brands).

• They knew they were the small team that could be successful.

• Jodi Geschickter described the victory as something the team desperately needed.

With only one victory in 14 years in NASCAR’s Cup Series, there were those who often questioned JTG-Daugherty Racing as to why it chose to continue the daily struggle a one-car operation faces in stock car racing’s top level where multi-car teams normally rule the landscape.

When the pandemic struck, people constantly knocked on their door, wanting to purchase the small team’s coveted charter. Each time team co-owners Tad and Jodi Geschickter told them no. They believed in their vision, their team and their 18 corporate sponsors (Kroger and Fortune 500 top share brands).

They knew they were the small team that could be successful. They believed in Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the sixth driver to campaign one of their Chevrolets, and on Sunday, he delivered them a victory in stock car racing’s most coveted race—the Daytona 500.

A former Sprint Car driver known for his prowess on NASCAR’s superspeedways, Stenhouse had inched ahead of Joey Logano just seconds before the caution button was hit for a multi-car crash on the race’s final lap in double overtime. The race ended a half lap shy of the checkered flag, but that didn’t matter to the 45-employee team.

“I kept telling myself, if we just keep working on our car and keep believing in ourselves, maybe something will work out,” crew chief Mike Kelley said.

“When I woke up this morning, I told myself—and this is something I used to do for Ricky when we had tough days in the Xfinity (Series) car—I just wrote him a note that only he would see. It was on top of the roll bar in front of him, and it said, “We believe, and we believe today.”

“We believe” has been the operation’s motto and it paid dividends in the season opening race, making the team the first single-car operation to win the Daytona 500 since the Wood Brothers in 2011.

Last year on lap 195 of the scheduled 200-lap event, Stenhouse was leading when he was involved in a wreck.

“I thought the exact same thing would happen tonight (Sunday),” Kelley said. “I saw the cameras starting to gather around the pit box when we were in the green-white-checker, and I wouldn’t look at them. I wouldn’t look up because I know it means so much to every driver out there, not just mine.

“At first, I wasn’t positive that we had won, and I wasn’t going to celebrate until I heard it in my ear. And then you just don’t believe it. You’re like, man, this is killing me. This is a dream come true.”

Jodi Geschickter described the victory as something the team desperately needed.

“We’ve come really close, so I try not to get our hopes up,” she said. “Tonight, when we were close and it was the last lap and there’s another caution, I just think, dear Lord, please, no. We need it. We need it, and we need it now. We need it tonight. We need it to happen. And it did.”

Tad Geschickter noted that COVID was a difficult time for their team.

“We create product demand. Our sponsors didn’t have a demand problem, they had a supply problem,” he said. “They’re like, man, yeah, we can’t make enough toilet paper to put on the shelves, much less do promotions. There was a lot of back and forth and people wanting to change contracts, and it was a tough two years.”

Then the team failed to qualify for the Busch Light Clash two weeks ago at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

“Probably missing the race in L.A. probably pushed us harder, because all winter long I’ve told these people to believe that we can do this,” Kelley said. “We sat on the pole here … in 2020. We’ve had really fast speedway cars over the last few years. Opportunity knocked tonight, and we were able to close it in.”

And winning team co-0wner Brad Daugherty—the five-time NBA all-star and college teammate of Michael Jordan at North Carolina—missed the on-track celebration. He was off site recovering from recent eye surgery.