MBM Motorsports has fielded the #66 for J.J. Yeley across the first three NASCAR Xfinity Series races including Saturday’s upcoming Phoenix Raceway event, though the team did not formally confirm until the night before that he will indeed run the full 2022 season.
In a late Friday night Facebook post, team owner Carl Long wrote, “We have been in such a rush to prepare cup and xfinity cars , I did not take the time to post that the week before Daytona , MBM made a deal to put JJ Yeley in our 66 car all year!
“We will race the 13 some this year with Chad,, Timmy, Stan , and possibly Johnny or me (carl)!
“We are happy the way our xfinity program is developing. We are making improvements each week. We are focusing on making the 66 the best we can, while having fun and enjoying what we do with the 13 .
“The cup cars are a challenge with our limited resources. We do have a make up race for Bumper.com at COTA with Boris Said driving. Then the 55 Hex.com returns at Talladega with JJ Yeley. Other cup races are in discussions.”
A longtime face in NASCAR, Yeley will run his first full Xfinity campaign since 2017 for TriStar Motorsports, when he finished fourteenth in points with a top ten. He joined MBM for 2022 after spending 2021 in the Rick Ware Racing programme, which saw him run eight Cup Series races for the team and sixteen in the Xfinity Series. Starts in the latter with RWR was fielded in collaboration with SS-Green Light Racing.
With Yeley in the #66, MBM has enjoyed a strong start to the season with top-twenty finishes in two of the three races so far, and Yeley had come close in the exception as he placed twenty-second at Fontana. The car was originally to be piloted by Timmy Hill, who has been with the team since 2015, though Hill is instead focusing on his Camping World Truck Series operation. Yeley and Hill attempted to qualify for the Daytona 500 together in February but failed.
Other names mentioned by Long in his post included Chad Finchum, Stan Mullis, and “possibly” John Jackson and himself.
Finchum ran the full 2017 and 2018 Xfinity seasons for MBM, respectively finishing thirtieth and twenty-sixth in points before his schedule downscaled over the next two seasons. In 2021, he attempted nine races for the team, failing to qualify for three and recording a best finish of fifteenth at Charlotte. He has also made six Cup starts with MBM.
Mullis, a businessman and local-level racer from Las Vegas, has eleven Xfinity starts to his name since 2017 with MBM. Excluding 2020 when he only raced at Phoenix and a start-less 2021, he has attempted to compete at his native Las Vegas Motor Speedway every year, missing the show in last Saturday’s race there.
Jackson, who hails from Scotland, raced sporadically for various backmarker Xfinity teams between 2011 and 2020 including MBM. He is often in start-and-park rides, which resulted in him only finishing four of his thirty-seven career Xfinity starts.
Long has raced in NASCAR for over two decades, typically for smaller organisations including his own. In 128 career Xfinity races, his best finish is twenty-sixth at Kentucky in 2015.
The owner’s post also confirmed Said’s entry for the Circuit of the Americas Cup race. Said, a longtime NASCAR road course ringer, retired after the 2017 season but returned for the 2021 COTA and Road America Xfinity races with MBM.