The JGR jokes lasted a little over a month, but they are now obsolete.
Joey Gase Racing, who shared an abbreviation with fellow NASCAR Xfinity Series team and stock car powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing, is now Emerling-Gase Motorsports as the eponymous owner has teamed up with Patrick Emerling for the 2022 season. EGM will field the #35 car on a full-time basis as already planned under the original name, though Gase will now share it with Emerling and Shane Lee, as well as a part-time car whose number was not immediately revealed.
“I am very excited to be teaming up with Patrick on this new adventure,” Gase stated. “We both share the same vision and goals for the future, and we are both true racers at heart. The other cool thing is that we will be two of the youngest owners in the sport, but still have a lot of experience and knowledge to go with that.”
Gase enters team ownership after spending the last two seasons as a part-time Xfinity and Cup Series driver. He was an Xfinity regular from 2014 to 2019, during which he scored three top-ten finishes. Off the track, the 28-year-old is a champion of organ donation efforts, which is symbolised in the EGM logo with a green ribbon.
Emerling is coming off a runner-up championship run in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, a campaign that saw him win three times with top tens in all but three races. He has competed in the series since 2011, and the second-place season marked his fourth career top-ten points finish. He débuted in the Xfinity Series in 2020 for Our Motorsports, and ran three races in the team’s #23 in 2021 with a best finish of twenty-fourth at Kansas. EGM’s #35 acquired the owner points of Our’s #23, which locks the team into the early slate of races as the car was twentieth in the owner’s standings, though it also means the #23 will have to qualify its way into races with Our newcomer Anthony Alfredo unless the team gets points elsewhere.
“It was interesting how this team came about as Joey and I had the same goals of starting a NASCAR Xfinity Series team,” said Emerling. “We combined our equipment to field a competitive car full time, and I am very excited to see what the future holds for Emerling-Gase Motorsports”.
EGM’s cars were gained from Lee, who got his hands on the fleet from his 2019 employer H2 Motorsports. Lee ran seven Xfinity races for the then-upstart team before he was abruptly fired; H2 owner Matt Hurley was subsequently arrested as part of a government investigation into his financial activities. The 2017 ARCA third-placer did not return to NASCAR in 2020 or 2021.
Additional drivers will be announced at a later time.
