They say all good things must come to an end, but what if that ‘good thing’ could have been great?
Our Motorsports, owned by Chris and Mary Our, announced on July 18 that the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Dover Motor Speedway — with Kaz Grala in relief of Kris Wright — would be its last as an organization.
It ended a five-year run in the series that was equal parts promise and let down. For as close as the team once appeared to being a playoff contender, it looked to be as far in the series basement as it could go this season. As it turns out, Our got so low it sank.
Our Motorsports existed well before it made it to the NASCAR Xfinity Series. The team debuted in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in 2012 on a part-time basis, then ran full time with Mike Stefanik in 2013. You probably remember his first race with Our Motorsports, or at least Mike’s thoughts on it. In an up-and-down season, Our and Stefanik won two races and finished fifth in the championship standings.
The next year saw Our Motorsports continue to be victorious with 19-year old rookie Tommy Bassett Jr. winning the team’s second straight race at Bristol Motor Speedway. The team also expanded its operation to making part-time entries for the ARCA Menards Series, primarily for superspeedways.
The team made the jump to the Xfinity Series in 2020 with a full-time No. 02 Chevy mainly piloted by 2018 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Brett Moffitt. For a team brand new to the series, Our Motorsports exceeded expectations.
Six races into the season — a season with a scrambled schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic — saw the team register its first top 10 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The team’s first top five at Talladega Superspeedway was followed by two more top 10s in the next three races. Andy Lally took over for back-to-back road course races and earned back-to-back fifth-place finishes. Our’s first full-time season in the Xfinity Series ended with its No. 02 15th in the owner standings.
The sophomore season of Our’s venture into Xfinity saw tons of ups and downs. Moffitt got the team its best finish with a runner-up in the season opener at Daytona International Speedway, but the team’s newest car failed to qualify for the first 10 races of the season due to lack of pace and owner points. Relief came in the form of the No. 23 car, which had owner’s points RSS Racing and Reaume Brothers Racing, that had a whopping eight drivers split 30 races. Lally and Ty Dillon each had a fifth-place finish in that car.
In 2022, a trend started to rise. Just as it seemed Our Motorsports was putting together the perfect package to compete with the bigger teams in the series, a piece or two would splinter off.
Early in the season, with drivers Moffitt, Anthony Alfredo and Jeb Burton all having strong starts, the team got major financial backing from Good Money Motorsports — a partnership with Larry’s Lemonade owner Vic Reynolds and International Championship Boxing founder Jack Perone Fulton. It’s worth noting that as of May 31 this year, the Virginia SCC Clerk’s database shows the company’s LLC as “inactive” due to registration fees. The Original Larry’s Hard Lemonade Brewing Co., which brewed Larry’s Lemonade, is also permanently closed.
Midway through the 2022 season, Moffitt departed the team. Later, it was announced Burton would not be returning for 2023. Alfredo left for a season to join BJ McLeod Motorsports. Our Motorsports — after having three cars finish in the top 20 in owner points — would start from square one again.
The team’s third season saw the team reduced back to one car. The No. 02 barrel rolled both on the backstretch at Talladega and down the series standings. The combination of David Starr, Kyle Weatherman and Blaine Perkins never managed a finish better than 13th, and the car finished 32nd in the owners standings.
The team rebounded decently in 2024 with Alfredo back in the fold. Going with a new number, the No. 5, the team and Alfredo had five top-10 finishes in the first 10 races, including a ninth at Dover Motor Speedway that secured the team $100,000 via Xfinity’s Dash 4 Cash program. That consistency didn’t stick for the remainder of the season, but Alfredo still matched his career-best finish in the standings in 15th.
To put it bluntly, the bottom fell out when the team replaced Alfredo with Wright. Here’s the good news. Wright survived the chaotic finish at Martinsville Speedway for a season-best finish of ninth.
That’s about where the good news ends. The year started with a wreck heading to pit road at Daytona, beginning the world’s weirdest beef with Josh Bilicki. There was Texas Motor Speedway, where Wright was running well off the pace and triggered a wreck with leader Justin Allgaier. There was the Chicago street course, where Wright spun in qualifying, held up a run for Sammy Smith and failed to qualify all in one session. Even before he failed to make the race in Chicago, Wright was still 50 points behind the second-worst driver who’d ran every race this season.
Whether it was on-track performance or money or a combination of both, Our Motorsports felt it was time for a change after Sonoma Raceway. Ultimately, it meant the end of the team. It’s worth noting that the end of a team doesn’t mean the end of the world, especially in this instance. If you ask Grala, it seemed like a jovial weekend for the team.
“Luckily, just about everyone here, I think, has their next job lined up,” Grala told Frontstretch. “Everyone’s OK. It has not been a very sad mood. It’s been fun, joking sort of, ‘We might as well come out here and lay it all on the line.’ It’s kind of freeing to have nothing to lose.”
While it’s great to know all involved will come out the other side OK, it’s hard not to wonder what would have happened if the team could have kept all the pieces together for a little longer. What if Alfredo stayed another year after 2024? What happens if Moffitt sticks around? What if the partnership with Good Money Motorsports went better?
So here’s to Our Motorsports, which will forever remain in our memories in the ‘what could have been’ section of NASCAR lore.
James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a local sports reporter, including local short track racing. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.