Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson conceded the decision to move on from Corey Lajoie very well could come back to haunt him while also offering what the organization is looking for in his replacement.
The comments were made on Tuesday morning during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Dickerson, the longtime racer and spotter turned agent, co-owns the team with TJ Puchyr with private equity support from Group1001 says it wasn’t an easy decision moving on from his driver of four seasons.
“Sometimes it’s just kind of a gut feel,” Dickerson said. “Obviously, the team had been struggling and I had been agonizing over it for a couple months. You guys have been around, I call it struggling team syndrome where everything just gets analyzed to the nth degree. But it was really odd in a way because generally in these situations you have a crew chief that’s saying, ‘man, the driver’s not doing this.’ Or you have a driver that’s saying, ‘man, what’s my guy doing?’ And this wasn’t any of that. In some ways, that actually made it a lot more difficult because it’s like man, if it’s not this and it’s not that, then what the hell are we doing?
“And on top of that … the relationships are like deep. Corey’s a guy that was with us when we didn’t have anything. I just thought that with Ryan [Sparks, crew chief and soon to be full-time competition director] moving up and just trying to figure out what’s kind of going on, I just thought a clean slate was better for next year.
“I’m not sure that it’s the right decision. I’ve been kind of working through that, I still don’t know that it’s the right decision, I just thought it was going to be the best decision that we have for 2025.”
The team recently hired Rodney Childers, one of the best crew chiefs in the recent history of the sport, to take over the pit box duties for the No. 7 car starting next season. Meanwhile, Lajoie has followed-up his best season with his worst, one in which he leads the division in crashes and has underperformed compared to rookie teammate Carson Hocevar.
So Dickerson made a decision based on the results of this year while also conceding that Lajoie very well could be the guy he was last year in the right situation.
“Obviously, we made a change, right,” Dickerson said. “I’ve been representing drivers for years, I’ve sat there in that seat, and everything seems hollow. You know what I mean? You’re telling them, ‘Hey, it’s not you, it’s me.’ Things like that, right. It just seems all a little hollow. So, I don’t want to say anything here that’s not — that the boat fell on Corey because I think he’s going to go somewhere else and probably kick ass and make me look like a total idiot. In respective of all that, just looking for something or somebody that can plug in, somebody’s that’s got a bit of a long runway, somebody I don’t want say younger, but maybe somebody that stands on the gas, has respect of the racing community.”
The team also recently hired Michael McDowell from Front Row Motorsports to drive the No. 71 car next season and very well might have hired crew chief Travis Peterson to remain with him too. Not that Lajoie didn’t match the culture but Dickerson has a blue print.
“I feel like we have — most of our hires are essentially on brand,” Dickerson said. “We’re just trying to make these leaps towards this. Like the [Michael] McDowell thing. Like everybody’s like, ‘well that makes sense.’ I wouldn’t expect like a huge splash, I don’t think we’re going to get Dale Jr. to come out of retirement here. And certainly, at this stage in the game. But that’s the litmus test is whenever we make that decision for everybody to go, ‘ah, yeah, we saw that coming. That makes total sense.’ You guys know the list like we do. There’s not like a secret list of who’s walking around right now and who’s not. We’re just going to keep working through that.”