Tommy Joe Martins announced he will not return to MBM Motorsports for the 2020 NASCAR Xfinity Series season. The 32-year-old revealed the information Sunday evening (December 8) in a social media update to followers on Twitter.
Martins noted the split was amicable despite initially planning to run half the year with the team. He stated MBM Motorsports is likely to condense from four entries to two in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, leaving him on the outside looking in.
Offseason Update https://t.co/iOxNzbVccR
— Tommy Joe Martins (@TommyJoeMartins) December 9, 2019
MBM Motorsports has not yet announced its team lineup for next year. Joey Gase and Chad Finchum were full-time drivers for the program in 2019.
Martins competed in 18 races this NXS season, posting a best finish of 17th at ISM Raceway in November. His first nine races were with BJ McLeod Motorsports before making the switch to MBM over the summer, first racing for them at Watkins Glen International. He finished this season 28th in the championship standings.
Overall, Martins has competed in 57 NASCAR Xfinity Series races. He earned a career-best finish of 11th place at Iowa Speedway in June 2017 driving for McLeod.
Martins appeared optimistic about 2020 plans but currently had no concrete news to report. He owns a few NASCAR Xfinity Series cars, mostly Toyotas and one Chevrolet purchased from Brandonbilt Motorsports. The Chevrolet is a speedway car, so at minimum, there’s plans to race some of the speedways in 2020.
Martins prefers not to resurrect his family-owned team, Martins Motorsports, but he did not specify any possible teams for whom he would like to drive.
About the author
Mark Kristl joined Frontstretch at the beginning of the 2019 NASCAR season. He is the site's ARCA Menards Series editor. Kristl is also an Eagle Scout and a proud University of Dayton alum.
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If Carl Long can find reliability with 2 cars which is something he couldn’t find with 4 then
that maybe the way to go since there was weekends that he had only a 25% finish percentage
since 3 of his cars in some order conked out.
NASCAR’s stupid new 36 car field rule doesn’t help the little guys either.
If thinning the Xfinity Series fields does it’s job which is to weed out Start & Parkers
then I am 100% for it since starting & parking doesn’t bring any redeemable value
to the series especially since it is full of privateers already which ain’t a good look
to begin with.