Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Proud of His Longevity in NASCAR

During the race weekend at Nashville Superspeedway, Frontstretch’s Danny Peters spoke to Ricky Stenhouse Jr. about his longevity in the NASCAR Cup Series, his new contract with Hyak Motorsports, running in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, whether he would smash a guitar if he won at Nashville and his relationship with Kyle Busch.

Danny Peters, Frontstretch: You’re honoring Kyle Busch this weekend with your paint scheme this weekend at Nashville. Tell me how that came to life?

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: Yeah, it was a little bit last minute with NOS Energy Drinks sponsoring this Nashville race, and they’ve been a longtime sponsor of Kyle’s. He won a lot of races for them, so we both kicked up the idea of doing something to honor Kyle and it just worked out that they were sponsoring this weekend where Kyle won a lot in that car and obviously smashed the guitar and things like that. It just all worked out and it was a kind of a rush from the team and everybody to get it all pulled together. Definitely happy with how it turned out and honored to drive it this week. I like our regular paint scheme, but this one’s definitely very special to get behind the wheel of and hope we can run towards the front with it and do it solid.

Peters: Would you smash a guitar if you won?

Stenhouse: If we won in Kyle’s honor, I would definitely do that. I thought it was cool and, I mean, Kyle paid for another one to get done and Kyle put a lot of thought into that one. It wasn’t just, hey, I’m going to destroy this guitar, he definitely went through the whole process to get another guitar painted and pay for it and things like that. I thought it was a great moment.

Peters: Looking back, obviously with your All-Star moment with him, it’s kind of iconic now in NASCAR folklore. How do you look back at that now?

Stenhouse: Yeah, Kyle and I really only had that run-in. He wasn’t happy with me when I spun him at Daytona in 2018. I think it was obviously not on purpose. We only really had one major run-in, and that was it in the All-Star Race (at North Wilkesboro in 2024). But after that, I mean we were on great terms. We let it simmer a little. We talked about it and moved on and everything was good. I raced with him for a long time, chased him forever, especially in the Nationwide Series (now branded the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) back in the day when we were contending for wins each and every week and he was in his own car, the Gibbs cars, he was always one that you had to beat. A lot of fun racing with him and he definitely set the bar really, really high, for all of us. That was fun battling with him, but yeah, that was water under the bridge fairly soon after that.

Peters: It’s been amazing to see all the tributes and how much Kyle touched so many drivers throughout the garage. Just talk about it from your perspective.

Stenhouse: Yeah, I think it’s just the first time that any of us has been really put in this position to lose a current driver that is racing with you each and every weekend right now. We all felt a major loss when Greg Biffle passed away, but he wasn’t in the garage every week. To have somebody like that, you’re talking on the driver intro stage, or the week before we talked for 30 minutes at the Dover airport after the All-Star Race about old times, about energy drinks, about what the sport’s going to look like in seven or eight years, how the cars are driving. I mean, we talked about anything and everything, about Brexton racing, and so it hit us all hard.

It hit all the crew guys hard, the teams, the fans. I mean, the fans, haven’t had to go through something like this obviously since Dale [Earnhardt] Sr. Charlotte was a tough weekend. You still feel so bad for Samantha, Brexton, Lennix, Kyle’s parents, his brother Kurt, just everybody that was with him day to day, and hopefully there’s a lot of people in this garage that are going to step up and do everything they can for that family.

Peters: Talk a little bit about your longevity – an amazing run that you’ve had, you must be really proud.

Stenhouse: I’m proud of the career that I’ve been able to put together so far. You always want to win more. You want to be in contention for wins, but I know the place I’m at and where I’ve been in the sport. I’m proud of the wins that we’ve had. The Daytona 500 ( which Stenhouse won in 2023) was huge for myself and this team. Winning in 2024 at Talladega was another huge win as well, and I look back on my career – definitely the Nationwide Series stuff – I feel really good about it. We battled for wins against Cup guys that were winning on Sundays, in Cup-level equipment, and I felt like we went toe to toe with them for two years of just hard racing.

My 2012 season is probably what I’m most proud of. We won six races. I think we finished second nine times, and I think seven or eight of those were Cup guys coming down. So two championships, yeah, I’ve felt really good about those years and the Cup stuff, you just plug away. I think where we’re at at Hyak Motorsports, we’re continuing to show a lot of what we’re made of. We got 28-30 employees that work on our race car and we do a lot with little around here, and so super proud of moments like the Coke 600 last week. We ran in the top 10 all race, had a bad pit stop, but battled back for a 12th-place finish and got stage points in every stage.

And that’s one of the biggest crown jewel events we have other than the Daytona 500. For us to go out there and compete like that says a lot about this race team. I’m proud of my longevity, and I feel like I still have another seven or eight years left in me as long as we can keep putting the runs together like we had last weekend, keep putting sponsorship together. We have great partners here at Hyak and hopefully we continue to grow the program.

Peters: And speaking of the team, you recently signed a new long-term contract – you’ll be approaching almost a decade, right by the time that contract runs out.

Stenhouse: It will be cool. This is the only second team I’ve been with. I was with [RFK Racing] from 2008 to 2019. Now, I’ve been here since 2020 and I really love the family atmosphere of this race team. Like I said, we’re not going to go out and compete for wins each and every weekend. We know the race tracks we can go out and compete for wins. And I feel like we do that each and every week at those race tracks that we know we can contend. We know that we’re gonna have runs like at Charlotte, Bristol, Dover. There’s other race tracks that we can run well at, and we know that ,and we just try and take advantage of those and the ones that we struggle at. We just continue to try and improve. But yeah, almost a decade here by the time this next one runs out. Like I said, hopefully we can continue to push that out a little bit further and see what happens.

Peters: For as long as you’ve been racing, this is, I think the first year that you’ve raced in the Truck Series. You’ve had four starts this year. That must be a lot of fun to race in the trucks.

Stenhouse: Yes, trucks have been fun. Everybody at Niece Motorsports has been super fun to work with. Cody Efaw, who runs that program, was at Roush in the Truck Series as a Truck chief when I got there in 2008 when I started running the ARCA [Menards Series] car. I’ve known Cody for a long time, and they’re continuing to build that program up – they got Ross [Chastain] running a lot. They got myself, and [Shane van Gisbergen] ran one. All the J. F. Electric guys and Al Niece, they’ve put really good race trucks on the race track. I’ve had a blast. Daytona, Atlanta, we weren’t as great at Bristol as what I wanted to be. Charlotte was really, really fun, and looking forward to a couple more maybe.

Peters: Any chance we see you in an O’Reilly Auto Parts car?

Stenhouse: I don’t really have anything lined up right now at the moment to run any O’Reilly stuff, but when I watch the races, I think back to the years that I ran, and I definitely would like to get back in one. I want it to be the right situation. I don’t want to get in it just to get in it. I want to get in it and go out and have a chance to win , so maybe one day we’ll put something together.

Peters: You made a little side appearance on Denny Hamlin’s Actions Detrimental podcast. Any chance you’ll be back for a full appearance? I know you guys are good buddies.

Yeah, that’s up to Denny. I had fun stopping in. I think Denny does a great job with his podcast with Jared [Allen] and Travis [Rockhold]. I’ve known Jared ever since Denny got him into the sport, and he’s a really good dude. And I feel like Denny, I’ve been a great friend with him since, heck, I don’t know, I’d have to really think about it. It’s been a long time, so I really respect what he does and his take on the sport, and I feel like he puts on a good show. So, yeah, if he wants me on, I definitely would jump back on.

Peters: You had some fun with Cleetus [McFarland, also known as Garrett Mitchell] this week. Talk to me a little bit about that and also the T-shirt that you’re wearing, the wolf T-shirt.

Stenhouse: That was cool. Yeah, that was an old throwback Jeff Gordon shirt that I had found at a vintage shop. Cleetus had asked if we wanted to come out with a bunch of Chevy drivers to come out and run his Corvette. [Carson] Hocevar was sitting in the car when it started raining, so he didn’t get to make a run, and a handful of us didn’t either. So we jumped in his Cadillac drift car and ran it around, had some fun. Hopefully we can get back and do some drag racing. I haven’t done a ton of drag racing stuff in my past. So watching his Corvette run definitely got me excited to get behind the wheel. We just ran out of time – the rain came in.

Peters: You’ve won the Daytona 500, so you’ve won the big one. What would be your top three bucket list wins?

Stenhouse: Yeah, the next one would be the Bristol Night Race and then the Coke 600. Those two would be the next on my list that I would want to win at. But in the Cup Series, I mean, I’ll take a win wherever I can get them. If it’s at Atlanta, Daytona again, Talladega, I don’t really care if all my wins are on superspeedways – I just want more wins because I think that looking back throughout my career, I just need some more wins I feel like on the Cup side. If those are all at superspeedways, cool, but I definitely feel like where we’re at as a race team, we put together runs like we did last weekend at the Coke 600, there’s definitely mile-and-a-half race tracks we can win at. I feel like we can always have a shot to win at Bristol.