It’s no secret that Justin Haley has Hendrick Motorsports aspirations. Whether the interest is mutual is not yet clear but the 25-year-old and his management team are working towards that campus.
At the same time, Corey Lajoie had drawn up a similar career map over the past half-decade, once hand-writing a note to Rick Hendrick that expressed conviction that he should drive one of the four flagship Cup Series Chevrolets.
Lajoie had a consistent, if not spectacular, 2023 season driving for an ascendant Spire No. 7 team but followed it up with a campaign in which he has crashed a lot of cars — both his and those around him.
Both of those narratives converged this week, and in an extremely unorthodox fashion, with Haley and Lajoie effectively getting traded for each other starting next weekend at Kansas Speedway.
Haley will move from the Rick Ware Racing No. 51, where he was in the first of a multiyear agreement, to Spire with Lajoie going the other way in an announcement made Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“Justin came to us with a pretty unique opportunity for himself that put him in a position, I think, long-term for his career that was pretty attractive for him,” Benton said. “And I think through the course of talking through with him and obviously we have a close relationship with the guys at Spire and (co-owner) Jeff (Dickerson), we came to the realization that it was probably best to let Justin out of his contract for next year and make a change.”
But in working through all of this, Dickerson said Benton told him something about Lajoie that stuck with him.
“He was just like, ‘I think I can get more out of him than you,’ and okay, he said that as friends, right,” Dickerson said. “He said it as competitors and colleagues and it just stuck with me, you know what I mean?”
Dickerson said he had a lot of conflicting emotions parting ways with Lajoie but this agreement just made sense on several layers.
For Haley, he now moves to a team that has a direct line of resources from Hendrick via a technical alliance. He leaves one that has an alliance with RFK Racing.
Could RFK co-owner match whatever opportunity Haley has?
“Justin had a career opportunity that wasn’t anything we could match,” Keselowski said. “To be part of Rick Hendrick’s deal there and what that means for him after 25, that’s their announcement to have. Certainly everybody, I think, can respect and understand that.”
It also helps that Haley has previously driven for Spire, even winning their respective first Cup races together in 2019 in a rain-shortened race at Daytona.
“We’re going to go out there and do the best we can,” Haley said. “Obviously that’s the goal and see where it takes us in the future.”
Haley is going to finish this season with the current No. 7 team, meaning with crew chief Ryan Sparks, who will transition into a full-time competition director role after the season. Once the calendar flips, Haley will be paired with one of the biggest hires in company history in championship winning crew chief Rodney Childers.
Again, Haley and Childers working together is every bit about making a statement — about what Spire can become with elite personnel on its payroll but also where the driver believes he belongs at the highest levels. Childers is going to represent a measuring stick for Haley.
“To work with a championship winning crew chief like Rodney Childers and the group he is going to build around us, that is obviously a big step for my career,” Haley said. “It was definitely one of the attractive factors when Jeff reached out to me.
“So obviously, the next seven (races) will be with Sparks and all those guys, but definitely hope I can breathe some fire into him as a young spirit and see what unfolds.”
But what about Lajoie?
It’s not lost on him, despite all the friendships made at Spire over the last four years, that this isn’t the send-off he or anyone else worked towards.
“It’s bittersweet for me but I also am well aware that the garage moves and the sport moves at lightning speed,” Lajoie said. “So any sort of luncheon or parade they would have thrown will happen on Monday and then they’re going to slam and lock the door shut behind me.
“I don’t think there is going to be a fiesta and a pinata out there celebrating the exit and entrance but this is bittersweet because we leave familiar faces and trucks and lounges and it’s time for a change.”
Unlike Haley, who is locked in to Spire next year, Lajoie has seven races to either click with Ware, Benton and crew chief Chris Lawson or prove himself worthy of another opportunity. There is no guarantee beyond this.
“We think the world of Justin because he’s helped build it and make it attractive enough for someone like Corey to want to come here and give it a shot,” Benton said. “So what we’re trying to do is take advantage of an opportunity that I think helps everyone.
“It gives us an opportunity to evaluate how well we work together. I think we would be foolish to not lean into the opportunity to work with someone like Corey but we need to make sure that we can do what we need to do together, right?
“That’s the unique opportunity that we can take in these last seven races.”
For Lajoie, it’s a valuable reset with a team that has those aforementioned RFK resources to prove there is still a place for him somewhere in the Cup Series. And he has to, because Lajoie is adamant that he’s not interested in being a Xfinity or Craftsman Truck Series driver.
“I’ve had some opportunities in Xfinity and Trucks, but I told Robbie several weeks ago, ‘all my chips are pushed onto the table to drive that 51’ because my entire guiding light, since I was eight years old was to be a Cup driver,” Lajoie said. “It wasn’t to be a Truck Series driver or an Xfinity Series driver.
“I said I wanted to make it to the Cup Series and race against the very best. And that’s freaking hard, right, because these guys who race Cup are the very best. I had some other opportunities but to leave racing on Sundays didn’t sit right for me.
“I wanted to stick it out for an opportunity like this, however long it took, with the grace extended from Ford and Chevrolet, and Jeff and Spire, they all helped me start this chapter much earlier that I anticipated.”