Legacy Motor Club seeks to build off Daytona 500 success at Atlanta and beyond

One night won't change things for Legacy Motor Club, but the finish of last weekend's Daytona 500 was a much-needed boost for a team that has struggled on the track and made significant changes off it in the past six months.

Jimmie Johnson's third-place finish and John Hunter Nemechek's fifth-place result in the Daytona 500 equaled the number of top-five finishes Legacy Motor Club had the previous two seasons combined.

With Erik Jones falling inches shy of winning his qualifying race and then finishing 12th in the Daytona 500, the first points race of the season was a success for the team owned by Johnson. The key is to carry that momentum into Sunday's race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and beyond.

"We already really know that we're better than 2024," Nemechek said this week. "I mean, we couldn't have got much worse, for sure."

Last year was difficult for Legacy Motor Club in its first season with Toyota and switching from Chevrolet. Unlike fellow Toyota team, 23XI Racing, Legacy Motor Club was not as closely aligned with Joe Gibbs Racing. Without those resources, performance proved challenging.

Jones had two top-10 results last year. Nemechek collected four top 10s. Johnson had none in nine starts. The three combined to finish 25th or worse 50 times last season.

Such performances led to several management changes.

"One of the worst parts I've experienced as an owner is termination and trying to move on from an individual or a department of people and bring in someone new," Johnson said. "I'm not sure I'll ever get comfortable with that. So that's been tough, and we went through a lot of that over the course of last season."

Among the key moves:

Jacob Canter was hired Aug. 9 as director of competition. He spent nearly 16 years at Joe Gibbs Racing, going from race engineer to Research and Development Team Manager. Canter was the engineering manager of vehicle performance at General Motors before joining Legacy Motor Club.

Brian Campe was named the technical director on Oct. 4. He had multiple roles at Team Penske after being at Hendrick Motorsports. Campe rejoined Hendrick Motorsports in 2021 and eventually became the organization's technical director before he went to Legacy Motor Club.

Chad Johnston was named the team's manager of race engineering on Nov. 15. He had been a crew chief for several organizations, including Stewart-Haas Racing, before he joined Legacy Motor Club.

The team announced Jan. 27 that Johnson had become the majority team owner and that Knighthood Capital Management had acquired a minority stake in the organization.

"On the competition side, we've really restructured, reorganized the department, and, you don't have a choice, but we started in the late spring of 2024 and started making changes, evolving and ultimately trying to recruit individuals to our company," Johnson said.

"That process is tough, on top of people who are available, on top of contracts and when they're going to be free and come and work for us. So really, mid-November, maybe even the first of December, we had everyone in-house that we recruited. So, there's been various steps along the way with people coming in.

"I'd say Jacob Cantor was probably the earliest one to come in and his presence, trying to put processes into place and organize the competition department. He at least got a head start on it. We're still playing catch up and we're not totally where we want to be, but we've made a lot of massive steps forward."

Jones knows it will take time to build Legacy Motor Club.

"One thing we can't hire or buy is time," he said. "We're competing against time right now to build out our sim program and that side of things. Build out our aero program and car builds. That's just a process that's going to take time and experience.

"Along with that, these guys are very sharp but are in new roles. New roles that are more involved than what they've done in the past. Not to take anything away from them, just bigger roles so it'll take some time as well."

Even with the success at Daytona, it is clear that work remains.

Both Jones and Nemechek failed to advance to the 23-car Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.

While Johnson secured a starting spot for the Daytona 500 in single-car qualifying, he was 29th on the speed chart. Jones was 36th and Nemechek was 38th among 45 cars that made an attempt.

"We didn't have the speed in qualifying, but they drove really good in the draft and we know kind of some of the areas that we need to work going back superspeedway racing," Nemechek said.

"It's a testament to everyone that is working hard and a lot of long hours during the offseason in the shop and just trying to get the place running smoothly and like we want it to be able to be contender one day.

"Brick by brick we want to build this place to be able to try to win races and have the opportunity to win championships."