Motorsports are seldom compared to stick-and-ball sports, and whenever such a comparison comes up, fans are quick to point out that motorsports are vastly different than stick-and-ball sports.
One thing that stick-and-ball sports has that motorsports almost never does is trades. The front office makes transactions that usually involve sending one or more of their players or draft picks to another team in exchange for one or more of that team’s players or draft picks.
Motorsports almost never does trades – most of the time when a driver changes seats, it’s through free agent signings.
The key word here is “almost.” While it is a rarity, it is still possible. And on Friday (Sept. 20), one of those rare trades took place.
Two NASCAR Cup Series teams announced an even driver-for-driver trade. Justin Haley, current driver of the No. 51 for Rick Ware Racing, will head to Spire Motorsports to drive the No. 7. The current drive of the Spire No. 7, Corey LaJoie, will head to RWR to take over Haley’s No. 51.
The trade will take effect following this Saturday’s (Sept. 21) race at Bristol Motor Speedway. The drivers will be seen in their new rides in the next race at Kansas Speedway on Sept. 29.
This type of move is unprecedented. Very rarely does a full-time driver leave a team for another midseason, let alone two drivers being traded. As such, it’s worth breaking down how the trade will fare for both parties.
Most stick-and-ball trades have their analyses, so let’s break down this once-in-ab-a-blue-moon driver swap. We’ll take a look both sides of the trade and ultimately figure out who may benefit most from this trade.
Justin Haley Heading to Spire Motorsports
After signing a multi-year deal with Rick Ware Racing, which likely put him in the RFK Racing pipeline, Haley won’t even see that contract through one year before jumping ship from Ford to Chevrolet. In fact, Haley himself brought up the idea of moving to Spire to RWR’s upper management according to the joint press conference.
Pro: A reunion three years in the making
The best thing that could happen to Haley in this trade is that he isn’t going somewhere unfamiliar to him. Haley’s first career Cup starts came with Spire while he was still a full-time driver in the NASCAR Xfinity Series with Kaulig Racing.
He drove the No. 77 back when Spire was still largely a one-car backmarker team. However, in just his third start, Haley and Spire made some magic together and stunned the field, winning a rain-shortened summer race at Daytona International Speedway in 2019.
To date, it’s the lone Cup win for both Haley and Spire.
Haley rejoins a very different Spire race team than the one he left. The team has progressed from perennial backmarker to top-10 contender. The team has expanded from one full-time car to three, all with solid sponsorship. It now has a winning Craftsman Truck Series team and is very solidly a part of the Chevrolet development pipeline.
Haley himself has made strides as a Cup driver, too. After being promoted in-house by Kaulig to the Cup Series in 2022, he has slowly found his way into more top-five and top-10 finishes. Even after jumping ship to RWR, Haley has been able to deliver two top 10s to a team that has largely brought up the rear of the field for most of its existence.
Haley and Spire are both in better places than they were when they last joined forces, and that could be a dangerous combination to end the season.
Pro: A potential Rodney Childers pairing sweetens the deal
Haley is confirmed to drive the No. 7 in 2025. You know who else is in Spire’s plans for the No. 7 in 2025? Rodney Childers.
Childers has been crew chief of the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 since the expansion team was created in 2014. With Kevin Harvick, he won 36 races and the 2014 championship, all while keeping the No. 4 in consistent championship contention. While he has failed to reach victory lane with Josh Berry this season, the No. 4 team has still showed measured improvement since the beginning of the 2024 season.
This came after Childers was able to squeeze out three wins in six seasons with a largely midpack Michael Waltrip Racing team, winning two races with David Reutimann and one with Brian Vickers.
Now Childers is on the move at season’s end to Spire, replacing Ryan Sparks as crew chief of the No. 7 – the same No. 7 Haley is slotting into.
With Spire and Haley both on the rise, getting a savvy, veteran crew chief like Childers could be a winning ticket in 2025. It’ll be a fun pairing to watch – assuming all things stay the same for next season.
Pro: A young team to end the season with a veteran presence next season
Haley now joins Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar as the team’s three Cup drivers to end the year. The team’s average driver age is now just 23.67 (Smith and Haley are both 25, while Hocevar is 21). While Smith is leaving at season’s end, it’ll be interesting to see what the team can do with such a youthful roster in the final seven races.
Even still, with Michael McDowell coming in next season to replace Smith in the No. 71, it then gives a veteran presence to counterbalance Haley and Hocevar’s youth. It’s a big move for Spire to make, but it’s one that could pay off and land them in victory lane more often in 2025.
Con: Where would Haley go afterwards?
This might be one of Haley’s best rides yet in the Cup Series, but it leaves him with very little path forward in Cup.
It could be a path for him to eventually move to Hendrick Motorsports, but with drivers like Corey Day, Rajah Caruth, and even Carson Kvapil waiting in the wings for their opportunity in the Hendrick pipeline, it might be hard for Haley to find a better ride without jumping manufacturers yet again.
But of course, Haley could obviously stick with Spire long-term like LaJoie did. Maybe it turns into a championship-contending team while he’s there. But for right now, the options for a better ride are slim to none, if that’s what he’s seeking.
Corey LaJoie joining Rick Ware Racing
LaJoie and Spire announced earlier this year that LaJoie would not return to the team in 2025. Now they’re pairing ends seven races earlier than planned, and LaJoie now heads to a team with hands in all sorts of motorsports.
Pro: A return to Ford for LaJoie
LaJoie is not unfamiliar with Ford, as his previous team before joining Spire, Go Fas Racing, fielded Fords for him. Like he was with Spire, LaJoie was also committed long-term to Go Fas before the introduction of the Next Gen ended up shuttering the team.
While RWR is an entirely new scheme for LaJoie to try to fit into, it’s not exactly a complete unknown given his prior relationship with Ford. It’s a good start in an otherwise myriad of new things for him to get used to.
Pro: A hard reset for both sides after rough seasons
Following Haley’s most recent top 10 with RWR at World Wide Technology Raceway, RWR has largely fallen back into its place as a sub-25th-place team. Some of it has been through dumb luck, some of it has been through driver or team error, some have been through mechanical issues.
However, the hot start that they sort of got off to at the beginning of the season (at least for RWR standards) has not only cooled off, but arguably frozen up altogether.
LaJoie, on the other hand, has had a season from hell. Despite statistically running better than Haley, LaJoie has crashed a lot of racecars – whether they’re his own or someone else’s. Once a fan favorite, many fans have since found his performance in 2024 irritating, with some hoping he’d be demoted to the Truck or Xfinity Series after this year.
Part of that may be why there was a mutual agreement to part ways at season’s end, and part of that might be why that agreement is ending seven races early.
Either way, both parties could use a reset, and pairing up could be just the reset they need to get things back on track.
Con: RWR not committed to LaJoie past 2024
In the joint press conference announcing the trade, RWR team president Robby Benton did not commit to LaJoie remaining with the team for 2025. This isn’t the greatest thing I’d wanna hear if I were LaJoie. That gives him seven races to go out and prove himself worthy of keeping the seat full-time for 2025.
It’d be hard to imagine LaJoie not being part of RWR’s 2025 plans, but maybe right now it just sees him as a part-time driver in its rotational No. 15 instead of a full-timer. After all, LaJoie has torn up a lot of racecars, and a team like RWR can’t take that risk. These next seven races are crucial to LaJoie if he wants to remain full-time.
Who Won the Trade?
It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
The pros greatly outweigh the cons for Haley and Spire. Haley and Spire have a higher ceiling as a pair than LaJoie and RWR. Lots of talent is coming into Spire next season to assist Haley. Haley is less likely to tear up equipment and could contend for wins.
On paper at least, it appears that Spire won the trade. But you know what they say: What’s good on paper isn’t necessarily good in practice. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Maybe a year or two from now, we’ll revisit this and give a “trade regrade” like the NFL analysts do.
For now, it’s a solid A for Spire, and a C+ for RWR.
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, among many other duties he takes on for the site. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight-choreographer-in-training in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.
Concerning Spire, let’s go back to this time last year. Their addition of Zane Smith was hailed as a brilliant move as he was considered to be a young driver destined to be a star. At the same time Spire added Carson Hoecevar, who was under question due to his multiple rough driving incidents in the Truck Series (ironically the same reason LaJoie was shown the door from Spire this year). Now we come to close to the end of ‘silly season’ and Hoecevar is looking like the budding star, while Zane Smith was fired by both Trackhouse and Spire and is currently out of a ride for 2025.
Justin Haley’s return to Spire may end up with mediocre results in 2025, even with Rodney Childers on the box. Childers used to be an elite crew chief, but so far, his record with the Spec Car hasn’t been that good. Haley might luck into a win thanks to a wreck-filled super speedway race, but that’s his ceiling. So giving Spire an ‘A’ for coming back to Spire, the ‘black box’ of a Cup team (where does all that money come from?), might be presumptuous.
Neither! It’s a trade for fourth-line wingers or fourth round draft picks.