{"id":305867,"date":"2025-11-25T12:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305867\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T12:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:09:08","slug":"nascar-championship-winner-signs-new-driver-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305867\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR championship winner signs new driver for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Supra may not have had a full-time driver<\/a> during the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, but that didn’t stop the No. 19 team from winning the owner championship, largely due to Aric Almirola’s three wins as the car’s primary driver.<\/p>\n

His second place finish in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, after he had qualified the No. 19 team for the Championship 4 by winning the round of 8 race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, was enough to seal the title, even though it was Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love who won the race and was thus crowned 2025 series champion.<\/p>\n

Love’s No. 2 team had already been eliminated from owner championship contention<\/a>, so Almirola’s move to get around and stay ahead of JR Motorsports’ Connor Zilisch was the move that netted the No. 19 team the owner championship, ahead of Zilisch’s No. 88 team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in 2026, Joe Gibbs Racing no longer plan to use the No. 19 as a “star car”.<\/p>\n

Brent Crews, whom some have already tabbed as Denny Hamlin’s long-term replacement<\/a> behind the wheel of the No. 11 Toyota at Joe Gibbs’ Cup Series team whenever he eventually retires<\/a>, is set to pilot the No. 19 Toyota full-time throughout the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season.<\/p>\n

Crews is still set to miss four races<\/a>, because he is not slated to turn 18 years old until Monday, March 30, 2026.<\/p>\n

Of the season’s first seven races, the Toyota Racing Development driver is only allowed to compete in those at Circuit of the Americas, Phoenix Raceway, and Martinsville Speedway; he must sit out of the races at Daytona International Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Darlington Raceway.<\/p>\n

The driver of the No. 19 Toyota for these four races has not yet been confirmed, but Crews is expected to be eligible to run for the championship, since it’s highly unlikely he would not be granted a playoff waiver (provided the playoffs still exist<\/a>) by NASCAR for missing four races due to the fact that he would not yet be 18. He is on course to run 29 of the 33 races on next year’s calendar.<\/p>\n

The 17-year-old Hickory, North Carolina native earned a total of six victories in 11 starts across all of his ARCA Menards Series appearances in 2025, all with Joe Gibbs Racing.<\/p>\n

He also made select starts for Tricon Garage in the Truck Series and placed as high as second place at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval before adding a fourth place finish at Martinsville.<\/p>\n

Crews is Joe Gibbs Racing’s second confirmed driver for the 2026 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season. He is set to join series veteran Brandon Jones, who is once again set to drive the No. 20 Toyota full-time.<\/p>\n

William Sawalich drove the No. 18 Toyota<\/a> full-time as a rookie in 2025, and fellow rookie Taylor Gray drove the No. 54 Toyota.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Supra may not have had a full-time driver during the 2025…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-305867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}