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One of the biggest talking points going into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season is Jimmie Johnson's team Legacy Motor Club's alliance with Toyota. Despite having won seven titles with Chevrolet during the peak of his stock car racing career, Johnson and his team decided to part ways with the golden bowtie ahead of the upcoming season.
The team, co-owned by Richard Petty, made the switch to Toyota as the manufacturer of seventh-generation Next Gen Cup cars in search of a better performance. Legacy MC's tenure in the highest echelon of the sport has not been the smoothest as the team has often struggled for results despite the likes of Johnson, Noah Gragson and Erik Jones behind the wheel.
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Aiming to address this issue of the lack of performance from a car manufacturer's point of view, Legacy MC's CEO Cal Wells III recently spoke about how the team's partnership with Chevrolet did not yield the expected results.
He elaborated on the bowtie's focus on Jimmie Johnson's team and told autoweek.com:
"One of the things that Jimmie (Johnson) and Maury (Gallagher) realized very early, is that they needed to be what is termed in NASCAR vernacular as tier one. Unfortunately, GM just didn't feel that way. And they left (Legacy MC) at what I would consider a tier three, where the information was very limited and intentional."
Further adding to what Toyota as a manufacturer brought to the table for Legacy MC, Wells added:
"Toyota on the other hand, it did make sense. And so through a series of meetings, at that time I had my TRD hat firmly on, Jimmie (Johnson) filled the voids that weren't had in his operation and it ended up the view was it would be the perfect marriage."
It remains to be seen how Jimmie Johnson and the rest of the Legacy MC drivers adapt to what is a completely different way of working with Toyota despite the Next Gen car being regulated in several areas.
Will Jimmie Johnson be driving for his own NASCAR Cup Series team in 2024?
Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson will kick off his part-time 2024 schedule in the #84 Toyota Camry XSE at this year's Daytona 500. The famed event will go live next month.
Until the start of the 500-mile-long race, fans can look forward to the exhibition-style Busch Light Clash at the LA Memorial Coliseum, followed by the qualifying Duels at Daytona.
