B.J. McLeod Motorsports has watched Matt Mills‘ career with great interest, and will continue to do so in 2022 as he rejoins the team for a sixth season in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Mills made his Xfinity Series début in 2017 for BJMM. After sporadic starts for JD Motorsports and NextGen Motorsports that year and in 2018, he rejoined BJMM for the rest of the latter and has remained with the team since. While he has never run every race in a given season, he has become a regular by entering nearly all rounds since 2019, making twenty-nine, thirty-one, and thirty of thirty-three starts in the three years during that timespan. He scored his lone top ten in 2019 at Daytona when he finished tenth.
In 2021, he placed twenty-ninth in points with a best run of fourteenth at Michigan. Much of his starts for McLeod have come in the #5, but he has also flipped to other numbers like the #78 and #99.
“Matt has been an important part of the growth of our race team the last several years,” McLeod stated. “He stuck with us through some growing pains and has helped make our organization better. I believe his commitment and hard work, with the addition of some key personnel will lead to success for Matt and the entire team.”
Nicknamed “Red Five” as a nod to Star Wars and his #5, Mills is a devout fan of the popular space opera franchise and has made his fandom known even on the track. He wears helmets with a Star Wars flair, which includes Aurebesh writing, and has a TV pod on his car’s roof painted to resemble R2-D2. His pit sign is designed to be a combination of the Rebel Alliance’s Starbird emblem and BJMM’s skull logo. When he ran his first Cup Series race at Kansas last April in the #55 for BJMM, where he finished thirty-eighth, he nicknamed it “Red Fifty-Five”.
“I am excited for the 2022 season behind the wheel of the #5 Chevrolet,” commented Mills. “We have shown flashes of speed over the past several seasons and with some of the changes and improvements B.J. has made, there is a renewed sense of optimism and excitement throughout the whole organisation.”
Mills is the fourth confirmed driver for the team as Josh Williams and Stefan Parsons prepare to run the full schedule in the #78 and #99, respectively. Series newcomer Nick Sanchez has also joined the programme for a limited slate.