GMS Racing is one of the top organisations in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, and the team is now preparing to dip their feet into the Cup Series for the first time. On Thursday, the team announced plans to begin racing at the Cup level in 2022.
“GMS is always looking forward and I believe this is the next step for the team in that process,” team owner Maury Gallagher stated. “We have the goal to be a championship caliber team in any series in which we compete, and I am excited to watch the team grow in the coming years.”
Formed for Truck competition in 2013, GMS is Chevrolet‘s flagship team in the series and operates the Drivers Edge Development programme with JR Motorsports. They currently field five trucks for Tyler Ankrum, Sheldon Creed, Chase Purdy, Zane Smith, and Jack Wood. In 2020, GMS drivers comprised three of the four final championship drivers, with Creed going on to win his first series title and Smith finishing runner-up to claim Rookie of the Year. Creed’s triumph marked the team’s second driver’s championship after Johnny Sauter in 2016.
Eleven rounds into the 2021 season, Creed is the only GMS driver with a race win—at Darlington in May—and he sits sixth in points. Smith is ahead in fifth followed by Purdy in twentieth. Purdy is a rookie while Wood takes over the #24 full-time after it briefly served as a multi-driver truck.
From 2016 to 2019, GMS raced in the Xfinity Series. Spencer Gallagher, son of Maurice Gallagher and current team manager, won the team’s lone race in the series at Talladega in 2017. Despite making the playoffs in 2019 with then-rookie and current Truck points leader John Hunter Nemechek, the team shuttered the Xfinity programme at the end of the season.
GMS also fields a car in the ARCA Menards Series for Wood, and the team won the 2015 title with Grant Enfinger. Sam Mayer won the ARCA Menards Series East championships with the team in 2019 and 2020.
“GMS has always risen to the occasion and proven that we are a team capable of competing at every level of this sport,” president Mike Beam said. “We have been preparing to make this step and with the addition of the Next Gen car in 2020, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make the move.”
Further details such as a driver, number, and sponsorship were not immediately revealed. The team has also not announced if they have acquired a charter that would lock their car into the full season.
