Two months after his latest Monster Energy Cup Series start, Joey Gase is back in the series for Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway, this time driving the #53 for Rick Ware Racing.
“I’m very excited and thankful to be racing under the lights the 4th of July weekend at Daytona International [Speedway] in the Cup Series,” Gase said in a team announcement on Monday. “This is by far one of my favorite race weekends and the superspeedways are tracks I love racing at, because no matter if you are on a power house team or a small underfunded team everyone has a chance to win. I also really have to thank Rick for this opportunity and all of our partners for making this happen. If it wasn’t for each and every one of them we would not be able to race this weekend.”
Gase currently races for MBM Motorsports in the Xfinity Series; he is twenty-seventh in points with a best finish of sixteenth at the season opener at Daytona. He has also attempted six Cup races for MBM, including missing the Daytona 500 in February and driving the team’s maiden second car at Kansas Speedway in May (he finished thirty-eighth). With 35 Cup starts in his career, he previously raced for Ware at Texas Motor Speedway in November 2018, finishing thirty-seventh in the #51.
In 2017, Gase recorded top-ten finishes in both the Xfinity events at Daytona with Jimmy Means Racing; along with a fifth-place run at Talladega Superspeedway in 2015, all of his Xfinity top tens have come at superspeedways. He also recorded his first top-twenty Cup run at such a track when he finished eighteenth at Talladega in 2018 with StarCom Racing.
“We are very excited at RWR to be adding another patriotic scheme to our No. 53 for this weekend’s race at Daytona,” team owner Rick Ware commented. “Joey Gase is a fine driver, and always does great at the superspeedways and I am expecting the same out of Joey this weekend.”
RWR fields the #51 and #52 full-time, while the #53 made its début at the exhibition Monster Energy Open in May with B.J. McLeod. The following week, McLeod ran the car’s first points race in the Coca-Cola 600, where he finished twenty-ninth. The #53 returned in late June at Chicagoland Speedway, where Josh Bilicki piloted it in a thirty-third-place run. McLeod and J.J. Yeley are currently listed on NASCAR’s entry list as the #51 and #52 drivers, respectively.
