Josh Bilicki might not be running the full NASCAR Cup Series schedule in 2022 like he did last year, but he will still see plenty of action. On Monday, Spire Motorsports announced Bilicki will enter “most” of the 2022 Cup slate in the #77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. His first start will come at Auto Club Speedway on 27 February.
“Spire Motorsports is thrilled to add a young, talented and resourceful racer like Josh Bilicki to our stable,” team co-owner T.J. Puchyr stated. “Josh is cut from the same cloth as the people who make up our team. He’s a grinder. He finds a way, goes out and gets it done. He’s going to be a great compliment to Corey LaJoie in our #7 car. We’re proud to welcome Josh to the Spire family.”
While 2022 will be his second season with substantial starts in Cup, Bilicki is no stranger to Spire. In 2020, he ran the Kentucky race and season finale at Phoenix in the team’s #77, finishing thirty-second and thirty-fifth. The two starts were just another chapter in his series of part-time Cup entries from 2017 to that year, which he mainly spent with Rick Ware Racing.
For 2021, he ran every race with RWR. While he switched to Xfinity Series points late in the year in order to run that series’ playoff rounds, he scored his first career top ten in any NASCAR division when he finished tenth in the Daytona fall Cup race. Bilicki ran four Xfinity road course races for SS-Green Light Racing, who maintained an alliance with RWR. Much of Bilicki’s NASCAR starts prior to committing to stock cars for good were on road courses as a ringer due to his background in sports cars.
“I couldn’t be more eager to start this new chapter of my career and join Spire Motorsports for the 2022 season,” said Bilicki. “I learned a great amount last year during my first full-time season in the NASCAR Cup Series, on and off the track and I feel that experience will help me make this transition to a new team. Spire Motorsports has taken big leaps over the last few years, and we feel the platform of the new Next Gen car will improve our performance all around.”
Bilicki is the first confirmed driver in the #77 for 2022. While LaJoie is the team’s full-timer in the #7, the #77 has been a multi-driver car since Spire’s formation in 2019; 2021 saw the car primarily piloted by Justin Haley, who ran thirty races, while Justin Allgaier, Josh Berry, Stewart Friesen, Jamie McMurray (in alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing), and Ben Rhodes had one apiece. The #77 finished thirty-first in owner points with two top tens by Haley; the car visited Victory Lane in the weather-shortened 2019 Daytona July race with Haley. The team has also added a Camping World Truck Series programme for the upcoming season.
