Emerling-Gase Motorsports will become a weekly two-car team for the 2023 NASCAR Xfinity Series. On Thursday, the organisation announced plans to expand from a single full-time car—the #35—to two beginning next year as the part-time #53 is elevated to run every race.
EGM was founded in 2022 as a joint venture between Joey Gase and Patrick Emerling, both of whom also drive the two cars alongside Shane Lee, who provided equipment he acquired from his previous team H2 Motorsports. Gase and Lee débuted the two-car effort in the season opener at Daytona, where Gase finished twenty-sixth in the #53 while Lee crashed out in the #35.
The #35 has run all seventeen races so far with the trio, though one-offs have also been made by Jeffrey Earnhardt (Phoenix), Parker Kligerman (COTA), and Chris Dyson (Road America). The entry sits twenty-eighth in owner points with five top-twenty finishes; Kligerman’s twelfth at COTA is the team’s highest placement so far.
Meanwhile, the #53 has only run two superspeedway races at Daytona and Talladega with Gase, who finished fourteenth at the latter.
“I am extremely proud of our Emerling-Gase Motorsports team,” said Gase. “There are
not too many start-up teams or small teams this season that can say they have made every race they have entered and only have two DNFs plus be in the top thirty in owner points. I have been racing in the sport since 2011 and can say without a doubt this is the toughest the Xfinity Series field has been in the last ten years. We could not do this without our tremendous employees we have at EGM and of course all our sponsors like Donate Life, Kitty Kat Coin, Eternal Fan, Captain Pips, and many more.
“With that being said, we have a lot of work to do and a lot of room to grow and Patrick and I are looking forward to the challenge.”
While a 2023 roster was not immediately revealed, the team expects to have one of the two cars be filled by a single driver while the other is shared by multiple.
“We faced a lot of challenges as a start-up team and I am very proud of what we have accomplished so far,” Emerling added. “I am looking forward to working with Joey and the whole EGM group and continuing to grow our team into the future.
