If you tuned into the most recent NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, you might have seen a rather unfamiliar face up front, at least for 2024 standards.
That face was Grant Enfinger, who went on to lead 71 of the race’s 200 laps, most of which came in the first half of the race. It looked like he would go on to dominate the race and take his first win of the season.
The win would have been huge, but not so much for Enfinger. The 39-year-old has been to Truck Series victory lane 10 times, and has been a regular contender for the championship as recently as last season. While the win would have been his first this year, which would be special in and of itself for Enfinger, the win would have been much bigger for his team.
CR7 Motorsports, founded in 2014 as a K&N Pro Series East (now ARCA Menards Series East) team, was a mainstay in the ARCA Menards Series as a part-time team with Codie Rohrbaugh driving the No. 7 (hence the name CR7). The team moved up to the Truck Series with Rohrbaugh in 2018, running as a part-time team through 2022.
The closest the team got to victory was in 2020, when future driver Enfinger and fellow owner-driver Jordan Anderson drag-raced to the start-finish line in the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. Another 100 feet or so would have allowed Rohrbaugh to sneak through on the inside to nab a major upset.
The following year in 2021 was actually the first time Enfinger and CR7 worked together. Enfinger was demoted to a part-time ride with ThorSport Racing, so he joined CR7 for the rest of the races he was supposed to miss, only fully missing the Daytona road course. Enfinger was able to grab one top five and three top 10s, nearly matching CR7’s combined numbers to that point (two top fives and five top 10s pre-Enfinger).
In 2022, CR7 ran the full season with just one driver in Blaine Perkins, but couldn’t finish higher than 18th all year and even failed to qualify for a race at Martinsville Speedway. 2023 didn’t go that much better, even with a driver change from Perkins to Colby Howard. Aside from a fourth-place finish at Daytona, Howard only managed to finish in the top-15 twice more. That led to another one-and-done season for a CR7 driver.
With CR7’s search for a new driver came the news that GMS Racing, a longtime Truck Series powerhouse, would shut down at the end of the 2023 season, leaving its three drivers scrambling to find rides for 2024.
One of those drivers was Enfinger.
With the two parties’ previous history together, it was a no-brainer.
So far, that move has paid off for CR7. The perennial backmarker now has four top fives and seven top 10s, both of which contribute to nearly half of the team’s career numbers (seven top fives, 16 top 10s). Enfinger has also led 99 laps this season, making it just the second time the team has led laps in a season — and even at that, the only other time the team led laps in a season was 2023, where Howard led a grand total of two.
A slow start to the 2024 season parlayed into two straight ninth-place finishes at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway. After another rough stretch, Enfinger managed to finish an impressive runner-up at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Enfinger then backed that up with a third-place finish at Charlotte Motor Speedway, before a less-than stellar 17th-place finish at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Now, Enfinger and CR7 enter the Olympic break on a three-race top-10 streak and two-race top-five streak. It started with a sixth-place run at Nashville Superspeedway. He then followed that up with a runner-up at Pocono Raceway and now the aforementioned third at IRP.
That finish at IRP was huge for both parties, as Enfinger scored enough points to lock himself into the playoffs one race early. That means CR7 will go playoff racing for the first time in its history.
At this point, it feels like it’s more of a matter of when Enfinger will win this year, rather than if. Despite Enfinger establishing himself as a veteran of the series, the win might still feel like an upset because of CR7’s history. But even if Enfinger can’t quite reach the winner’s circle this year, it’s still a career year for CR7 and will serve as great momentum heading into 2025.
But what changed? One driver can’t magically turn around a team that normally runs in the middle-to-rear of the field. Look at Kyle Busch in the Cup Series this year. Enfinger is a talented driver for sure, but he alone can’t right a ship. So where did the speed come from?
Well, there are two probable reasons. Some of Enfinger’s GMS crew guys likely followed him over to CR7 because, like Enfinger, all of GMS Racing’s staff had to find jobs following the team’s closure. In turn, CR7 also received some of the trucks and equipment from GMS in the offseason.
The other team to receive trucks and equipment was McAnally-Hilgemann Racing, which leads to the second likely reason for CR7’s boost in success. MHR and CR7 formed a technical alliance for 2024. It’s surprising that the alliance happened only now, as MHR and CR7 shared a race shop just down the street from GMS Racing until this season.
MHR was a good choice for CR7 to form a technical alliance with, as Christian Eckes, the team’s flagship driver, has all but locked up the 2024 regular-season championship and is one of the championship favorites this year. Tyler Ankrum and Daniel Dye, the team’s other full-time drivers, have also seen boosts in performance since they both joined the team this season (Dye, of note, also came over from GMS).
Between GMS staff, new trucks of winning caliber, and an alliance with one of the best teams in the Truck Series garage (of which it shared a race shop with until this season), all CR7 needed was a high-quality driver, and it got just that in Enfinger.
What’s rather unfortunate is how under-the-radar this story is, because Enfinger is naturally expected to run up front anyway. CR7 is the little team that could this year, and now it has a shot at a championship with Enfinger — which, by the way, he was one spot away from winning last season.
Rohrbaugh has since taken a back seat from racing to focus on team ownership, only making one-off starts at Daytona the last two seasons in a second truck for the team, the No. 97. He should be the first to know how far this team has come since his early days of running part-time ARCA seasons.
It’s a great story that is worth following as the playoffs approach, because this team was struggling for top-15s as recently as last season. And now, it’s guaranteed at least a top 10 points finish.
It has been an incredible rise for the small team based out of Statesville, N.C.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter. He has also assisted with short track content and social media, among other duties he takes/has taken on for the site. In 2025, he became an official member of the National Motorsports Press Association. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight coordinator in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.