In addition to his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series duties with Kyle Busch Motorsports, John Hunter Nemechek will run a part-time Xfinity Series schedule for Sam Hunt Racing. On Wednesday, the team announced Nemechek will drive the #26 Toyota Supra for various races beginning at Dover International Speedway in May. A full schedule was not immediately released.
The 23-year-old posted on Instagram, “Excited to join Sam Hunt Racing and Sam Hunt with Toyota Racing Development for a few races this year!”
Nemechek returned to full-time Truck competition in 2021 for the first time since 2017. Driving a Toyota, which he had not done in six years, he began the 2021 Truck season with a seventh-place finish at Daytona. He has six career wins in the series since his début in 2013, all with family team NEMCO Motorsports. His father Joe continues to run NEMCO as an owner/driver with occasional starts by other drivers.
In 2018 and 2019, the bulk of his schedule was concentrated within the Xfinity Series as he ran fifty-one races, including the full 2019 season, for Chip Ganassi Racing and GMS Racing. He scored his only win in the series to date at Kansas in 2018 before moving to a full slate with GMS, where he finished seventh in points with nineteen top tens, six top fives, and a best run of second.
2020 saw his lone Cup Series season with Front Row Motorsports, for whom he débuted late in the previous year as a substitute driver, as he scored two top tens and a twenty-seventh-place championship finish. He left the team after the year and joined KBM and Toyota.
SHR enters their first full season after débuting in 2019. Brandon Gdovic piloted the #26 to an eighth-place run, his and SHR’s first top tens, on the Daytona oval while Truck rookie Kris Wright will drive it on the road course. IndyCar Series regular Santino Ferrucci will contest the bulk of the team’s schedule beginning with the third race at Homestead.
