LEBANON, Tenn. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will remain with JTG Daugherty, signing a multi-year contract extension, the team announced Friday at Nashville Superspeedway.
“I really have enjoyed my time at JTG,” Stenhouse said Friday. “I feel like we haven’t had the end results points-wise, but I feel like we’ve had so many bright spots in our first few seasons together.”
Stenhouse noted that the Next Gen car has played a role in helping smaller teams catch the bigger organizations, making those smaller teams valuable places to be.
“I felt like if you weren’t spending a ton of money or had all this information coming in, trying to develop new parts and pieces, you really weren’t going to catch up when something was always evolving and always changing,” Stenhouse said. “When I first signed my contract with JTG, our second year we were supposed to have (the Next Gen) car.
“That’s what I was really looking forward to, it was like, ‘Hey, I know we might not be exactly where we want to be the first year, but this new car is coming in and we can learn it. More of the pieces are going to stay the same throughout season to season, and let’s try to build on that.’
“We had to wait an extra year for that. For me, I was very thankful that we were able to add another year to our contract to run this year with this race car. It definitely gave me the confidence running this car so far this year that I feel like being here we can still do great things and contend for wins.”
The 34-year-old Stenhouse is in his third season with the team. He enters this weekend 24th in the points. He had a stretch of four consecutive top-10 finishes in May before it was snapped at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Stenhouse finished sixth in last year’s race Cup race at Nashville. It was one of two top 10s that he had a year ago.
“We’re pleased to announce Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is returning to the company,” said Tad Geschickter, co-owner of JTG Daugherty Racing with Jodi Geschickter, Gordon Smith and Brad Daugherty, in a statement. “Ricky has done a solid job on the racetrack and off the track during Kroger Racing in-store activations for our esteemed partners. We’re continuing to learn the new car and we’re making progress. We’ve led laps, earned stage points and been close to winning this year.”
Since joining the team in 2020, Stenhouse has won the Daytona 500 pole in 2020 and scored five top-five and 11 top-10 finishes.