Ty Dillon joins Spire Motorsports for 2023, LaJoie returns

Spire Motorsports will retain a two-car lineup for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, but both cars will be filled by one driver each rather than the carousel of years past. Corey LaJoie remains the full-time driver in the #7 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, while the team has signed Ty Dillon for the #77.

Dillon has bounced between multiple teams since his four-year stint at Germain Racing ended with their demise. Things seemed to finally stabilise when he became the first driver signed by Petty GMS Motorsports for 2022, but he has struggled compared to team-mate Erik Jones; Dillon sits twenty-ninth in points with just a single top ten versus Jones who has a victory and is eleven spots ahead in the standings.

In July, Petty GMS and Dillon announced they would part ways after 2022; Noah Gragson was later tabbed as his replacement. By moving to Spire, he will hope for a fresh chance.

“I’m thankful for this opportunity, a new beginning with a very hungry team that is excited for the future,” said Dillon. “Spire Motorsports has been growing year after year, when you look at the way that Corey and the #7 team has developed to be competitive. The organization is heading in the right direction and I’m excited to be a part of bringing the #77 up to where Corey has been running. Hopefully we raise the whole level of competition together.”

LaJoie joined Spire in 2021 on a multi-year deal. While his current points standing of thirty-first is two spots lower than his 2021 placement, he nearly won but still scored his first career top five at Atlanta.

“I’m excited to return to Spire Motorsports for the 2023 season,” LaJoie stated. “With another year under our belts and a notebook on the new car, I know we can have a solid season and get that first win. It’s cool my buddy Ty is joining us as well. It will be nice to have a full-time teammate in the #77 to work with. We’ll all be headed to the Daytona 500 with the same goal in mind, to ‘Stack Pennies’.”

The #77 was the first car fielded by Spire upon their founding in 2019. While the #7 has been exclusively driven by LaJoie (with the exception of Josh Berry as a COVID replacement) since its opening, the #77 has been split between a litany of drivers. Justin Haley won in the car at Daytona in 2019.

For 2022, Landon Cassill and Josh Bilicki have mainly piloted the #77 with Justin Allgaier and Mike Rockenfeller making one-off entries. The #77 is thirty-third in owner points with Cassill holding its best finish of fourth at Daytona.

“As we go our separate ways, I wanted to send a sincere thank you to my friends at Spire Motorsports for their efforts this year,” posted Bilicki on social media. “While we had some bad luck at times, we also created memories that will last our awesome partners and myself a life time! Best of luck to in ’23.”

“There’s little doubt that we raised some eyebrows when we entered the sport as race team owners,” commented Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson. “We knew that we needed to learn how to crawl before we attempted to walk and eventually run. We’ve been quite fortunate to build a strong foundation for Spire Motorsports over the past several years. That’s a testament to the people of Spire Motorsports, and Corey LaJoie, Ryan Sparks (LaJoie’s crew chief and new Spire Director of Competition) and Kevin Bellicourt (Dillon’s CC) have been the bedrock of this organisation.

“The next step in our progression is to add an equally capable full-time driver for the #77 team and we’ve found just that individual in Ty Dillon. Clearly, the path that T.J. Puchyr (co-owner) and I have taken to be here today has been atypical. We have great respect for our contemporaries in the sport, and we are humbled to be among them. Collectively, we’ve been fortunate to serve a lot of functions and roles in racing over the past twenty years. That allows us to have a great appreciation and perspective of what it takes to be successful in this super-competitive environment. We’re very proud of what every member of the organization has helped us build.”