Colby Howard joins CR7 for 2023 NASCAR Trucks

In 2021, Colby Howard ran a pair of NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races for CR7 Motorsports. Two years later, he will run the full season for the team in the #9 Chevrolet Silverado RST. The team announced the hiring on Tuesday.

Howard finished seventeenth in the 2022 Truck standings, his first as a regular in the series, for McAnally-Hilgemann Racing with three top tens. He was not retained by MHR for 2023 as his #91 became the #35 and was filled by Jake Garcia. His series début came with Young’s Motorsports in the final two races of 2019, while he finished thirteenth (Darlington), fifteenth (Bristol), and thirty-eighth (Martinsville) in three starts for CR7 in 2021.

He arrived in the Trucks after spending the last two seasons in the Xfinity Series for JD Motorsports. Howard was originally running the full 2021 Xfinity slate before leaving JDM midseason to begin his transition into the Trucks.

“It was an easy decision for us to put Colby in the #9 Chevrolet Silverado with the speed he showed two years ago when he ran select events with our team, and also with the impressive season he had last year,” said team owner Codie Rohrbaugh. “I have been very pleased with the work and dedication he has put into CR7 Motorsports during the offseason. We have a lot to prove this year.”

As part of his new duties with CR7, Howard will also become a full-time mechanic in the team shop.

After being a part-time operation with Rohrbaugh as owner/driver from 2018 to 2021, CR7 upgraded to a full season in 2022 with Blaine Perkins. Perkins finished twenty-ninth in points with a best finish of eighteenth at Nashville before departing to race for SS-Green Light Racing in the Xfinity Series. CR7 has five top tens and three top fives, including nearly winning at Daytona with Rohrbaugh in 2020.