Jimmie Johnson’s NASCAR Cup Series team; Legacy Motor Club may not have had the best start to the season. Having a terrible performance package and a driver evicted, things were not looking too good. Thankfully, with LMC’s move to Toyota Racing Development next season, it seems like finally the tables can turn for them.
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It’s not just the cars that would be something new for the team, but also their upcoming 2024 driver, replacing the stricken Noah Gragson. Johnson may have hit the jackpot landing of the recent Kansas Xfinity Series race winner, John Hunter Nemechek, to complete their roster.
Meanwhile, in a recent interview, the upcoming LMC driver was questioned about his leadership roles within the team. Rather than highlighting his own leadership abilities, the driver chose to downplay his role and later elaborated on his reasoning for doing so.
Jimmie Johnson’s new driver talks about his leadership goals with the new team
While speaking in a recent interview, current Xfinity Season championship contender–John Hunter Nemechek shared, “I feel like my role has been pretty well. I feel like I’ve been a decent leader so far this year. I feel like from how many years I’ve been in the NASCAR world and the experience that I’ve had. It’s not like I’m necessarily a rookie coming in everyone’s, ‘Wow, you seem to make a rookie mistake or whatever it may be…'”
According to Nemechek, the last offseason required a significant amount of effort. He explained that he had to familiarize himself with all the members of his team, some of whom he had previously worked with during his stint with JGR in 2021 and 2022. Although he already had established relationships with some of his crew members, he still had to work on strengthening those connections.
“I think from a leadership perspective, I feel like I can be a good leader. It’s just putting the right people in place and making sure that you have a team around you that believes in you and a team that I believe in as well and I definitely feel like that’s a huge part of success.”
Subsequently, Kurland asked, “You said you’re a decent leader. Why do you say that?” Nemechek smiled and stated, “I feel like there’s always room for improvement, right? If I go out and tell you that I’m the best leader. That’s probably not going to be a true statement.”
“I’m not gonna go and say that. There’s always room for improvement. You can continue to push to do better every single day and you improve 1% every day, then that’s a huge gain by the end of the year.”
John Hunter Nemechek pulverizes the competition at the Kansas Xfinity Race
Nemechek has been on a roll throughout the season, having scored his sixth victory of the season on Saturday’s Kansas Lottery. Already he has been considered as the potential contender for the 2023 Xfinity Series champion and if that goes through, there cannot be a better way to move up into the Cup Series next year.
The future LMC driver apparently dominated throughout the duration of the race, winning all three of the stages. He effectively destroyed the competition after finishing a massive 7.521 seconds ahead of the car in second place.
With his win at Kansas, Nemechek successfully secured the regular season championship to his name, and now looks forward to concluding the remainder of the postseason in a similar manner. Judging by the Xfinity driver’s performance this season, one could argue that Jimmie Johnson may have indeed hit the jackpot for his 2024 Cup Series team turnaround campaign.
