LINCOLN, Ala. — Eleventh place might not sound like much, but it was a day to be proud of for JJ Yeley and Hettinger Racing team owner Chris Hettinger on Saturday (April 25) at Talladega Superspeedway.
It was the best finish to date for the first-year NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series team, as it was its first top 15 through the opening 11 races of the season. It was also Yeley’s best finish in the series since the summer race at Daytona International Speedway in 2022. Not too shabby for a team with three full-time employees.
“JJ [Yeley] does a really good job of taking care of the racecar, trying to be patient there, which you have to do on the superspeedways,” Hettinger told Frontstretch post-race. “That’s where his experience comes in. Kind of bummed, though, because we feel like if the yellow hadn’t come out, like he had a really good run coming and we might have been able to pick up a couple more spots and get that top 10. But anytime you can roll it in the trailer with an 11th-place finish, you can’t be upset about that.
But most importantly, Yeley and the team pulled off the finish despite being the only Ford in the entire field. Since AM Racing stopped entering NOAPS races after Martinsville Speedway in late March, Hettinger’s No. 5 has been the lone Blue Oval showing up each week. That’s something that sticks out especially at drafting tracks like Talladega, where manufacturers tend to work together.
“I mean, it’s not too bad,” Yeley told Frontstretch. “Obviously, being the lone Ford, I could do whatever I wanted, so I don’t have to worry on anybody else. And at the end of the day, it’s every man for himself.”
What Hettinger arranged was for Yeley to work with the Toyotas, as there were only six of them in the field, compared to the 31 Chevrolets.
“But you know when it comes down to the end, Toyotas are going to go with Toyotas and we’re going to get left out,” Hettinger said. “But fortunately, JJ did a great job hanging in there and getting us that 11th-place finish.”
Yeley felt that he could have gotten a top 10, except he had to lift at the end when Jeb Burton and Ryan Seig wrecked on the last lap.
“With five to six laps to go, my car was best in the middle and the top, so I was just playing with where I needed to try to make my runs,” Yeley said. “I drug the brakes and got far enough back and had a huge run into [turn] 3. Obviously, I wasn’t going to win the race, but I felt like I could have got up to about fifth or sixth. Then, I saw the excitement of the 27 [Burton] and the 39 [Sieg], and at that point you’re lifting and you’re looking into the sun and just trying to survive. So instead of driving through somebody, I kind of gave up a top 10, which it is what it is. Sixth, 10th, 11th, it’s not a win.”
It was exactly the finish the team needed, but it may have come just a little too late. Now, the team is faced with skipping the next few races until more sponsorship arrives.
“Yeah, unfortunately, we’re just at the point where sponsorship’s getting tough, so we’re going to have to sit back here a little bit,” Hettinger said. “Hopefully, this 11th-place finish will get some people’s attention that we do have fast racecars.
“I really do feel like we had a really good car at Kansas [Speedway]. Unfortunately, we got caught up in a wreck there on lap 2 and never got a chance to show it. It’s just a little bit of bad luck here and there and not capitalizing when we have good racecars, but we’ll go back and regroup. Hopefully, something comes along and we can come back to the racetrack.”
Whenever the team does show back up to race, the longtime NASCAR journeyman Yeley will be ready to grab his helmet again.
“Based off of sponsorship and all the things that it takes to make the world go around, obviously, we’re in a situation now where we’re searching pretty, pretty bad trying to find something,” Yeley said. “The next race, I’m not sure. There’s a chance that they [Hettinger] may sit out a few races until we can get some of that sponsorship in place. But whenever that time comes, if they’d like me to drive the racecar, it’d be a pleasure. I love working with these guys.”
But when Hettinger sits out of those races, pending AM doesn’t show back up or some new team doesn’t form, it would mean zero Fords in the O’Reilly Series. That would be the first race in the series to not have any Blue Ovals since the 1991 season finale.
“I wish Ford would give either Hettinger Racing or the series the support that it needs and really deserves,” Yeley said. “Obviously, it’s a No. 2 tier in NASCAR, but they haven’t for whatever reason, and maybe they have a reason for it. I guess as long as we can go out there and continue to have good runs, maybe they’ll have enough confidence that this is a team that’s worth supporting.”
Part of the decline of Ford in the series is due to NASCAR Cup Series teams like Team Penske and RFK Racing pulling out of the series over the course of the past decade.
“It’s tough because there’s so much engineering and stuff that’s in this to get these cars to go fast, and when you are the only car out there, there’s not a lot of data points to pull because you’re the only one collecting all the data,” Hettinger said. “So it puts Ford in a bad spot where obviously they don’t have a lot to offer because they don’t have any cars out there to gather data for, where Chevrolet’s got 34 of them or whatever they have out there.
“Hopefully, we can figure something out. It’d be nice to get Penske back in this deal and give us some support. But we’ll keep digging and see what we can come up with.”
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.