Race Weekend Central

Rick Ware Racing Moving to Cup Series Full-Time in 2017

There will be another new full-time entry in NASCAR’s premier series come 2017.

Rick Ware Racing will field the No. 51 Chevrolet starting at Daytona International Speedway come February, with several drivers taking the helm of the team’s entry. Timmy Hill will be the first to attempt to make the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series field, with Stanton Barrett, Cody Ware and Kevin O’Connell among those being named as the organization’s drivers.

The organization has purchased equipment from Tommy Baldwin Racing, which announced it would stop racing full-time in the Cup Series come 2017 after an eight-year run. Among the purchases are cars, a pulldown rig and technology support.

Joe Lax, who served as TBR’s crew chief in 2013 with JJ Yeley and worked with RWR’s multitude of drivers in the XFINITY Series in 2016, will lead the No. 51 team’s efforts in 2017.

Frontstretch originally broke the news that Rick Ware Racing would scale back its XFINITY Series program to have a focus on the Camping World Truck Series, with driver Spencer Boyd running on at least a part-time basis.

Rick Ware Racing last attempted to compete in the Cup Series in 2012, with Hill qualifying for the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. However, he failed to qualify for three races that year before the team decided to swap its focus back to the XFINITY Series.

About the author

Joseph started with Fronstretch in Aug. 2014 and worked his way up to become an editor in less than a year. A native of Whitestone, New York, Joseph writes for NASCAR Pole Position magazine as a weekly contributor, along with being a former intern at Newsday and the Times Beacon Record Newspapers, each on Long Island. With a focus on NASCAR, he runs our social media pages and writes the NASCAR Mailbox column, along with other features for the site.

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