JTG Daugherty's Perseverance Pays Off with Daytona 500 Triumph

In recent years, NASCAR’s grandest race, the Daytona 500, has produced some of its most heartfelt storylines; upset specials, first-time winners and last weekend, a lesson in steadfastness. The Daytona 500 has shown that in the right circumstance – most any driver, most any team, has the chance to hoist the sport’s most celebrated trophy.

For the 2023-winning team, JTG Daugherty Racing, it’s the combination of talent, teamwork and tenacity. Tenacity perhaps the star ingredient. And it has resulted in the first single-car team to win the Daytona 500 since the Wood Brothers did it in 2011 with then little-known rookie Trevor Bayne.

JTG Daugherty previously had only one NASCAR Cup Series win in its 15-year history – in 2014 at Watkins Glen, N.Y. with driver A.J. Allmendinger. Stenhouse’s win on Sunday was his first since 2017 when he won twice for Roush Fenway Racing.

It is the first trophy they have enjoyed together since Stenhouse joined the JTG Daugherty team four years ago. It’s a long time between wins both for driver and for team, but the difference in this pairing is that the length of time since a visit to a winner’s circle has only made them stronger together, more determined. And that’s exactly what makes this win more special.

“We’re tenacious, we don’t quit, we dig in,“ JTG Daugherty co-owner Jodi Geschickter explained after the race.

“I had a very strong family background that taught me that and they instilled that in me. You do have to raise questions in your mind and say, is this the right path? You have to be smart about it.

“But you just don’t quit. You get the information, you try to make good decisions and you just don’t quit.“

In so many ways, the JTG Daugherty win is a high-speed lesson in resiliency. Going nine years since a victory but believing from the first cup of coffee Sunday morning that they had every bit the same opportunity as any other team to win … that’s conviction. It has sustained the team and makes this Daytona 500 victory all the more significant.

There were harsh times over the years, Geschickter and her husband Tad concede, when others offered to buy their charter and times – particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic - when the couple and co-owner Brad Daugherty wondered if they could sustain the operation competing against mega-teams of the sport. Should they sustain the operation?

The answer is now a place in racing history.

“I think everybody questions because we are always wondering if we’re on the right path, the path that is our path, our journey in life,“ Geschickter said. “I think it would be a mistake not to ask that question, say, ‘Am I where I need to be?’ Sure, we asked. We asked that

“We do the best we can. We try to make prudent decisions, financial and surround ourselves with good people, people that support us and have the same goals and objectives. And we listen a lot. We try to listen more than we talk and listen to people that value us and respect us and whose intellect, we respect. That’s usually the direction we go.“

The direction was onward, thanks to that genuine, deeply felt belief that they could succeed. Primary sponsor, The Kroger Company, stuck with them too. Stenhouse came on board in 2017 and Mike Kelley joined the team as crew chief last year – the same driver-crew chief pairing that won back-to-back NASCAR Xfinity Series champions with Roush Fenway Racing in 2011-12.

And their first NASCAR Cup Series’ points-race “back together?” A win in the sport’s most iconic event for a small, family-owned team that proved just how important heart can be.

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“I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to answer to you what this means to me and Ricky because there were a lot of low days and there were a lot of days that is was just tough,“ Kelley said. “To get to the biggest state in the biggest series in motorsports on the biggest night and to sit up here, it’s pretty amazing.“

And that, the whole team - the whole sport - can agree.

“I think it puts more wind in your sails,“ a smiling Tad Geschickter said. “You’re just going to dig harder and faster for the next one. Definitely gives you some new energy.“