FORT WORTH, Texas — After Friday’s breaking news that Go Fas Racing had reached a deal to form a technical alliance with Stewart-Haas Racing for the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, Go Fas Racing’s team owner Archie St. Hilaire fielded questions from the media at Texas Motor Speedway.
The obvious question, I had: Is Corey LaJoie their top target as a driver in 2020, or are they looking at landing SHR’s Xfinity Series driver Cole Custer.
Hilaire was definitive that Custer will not be driving the No. 32 car next season.
“Cole Custer is not coming to our team,” said Hilarie. “It’s all over social media. Cole Custer is not coming to our team. I wanted to get that one right out of the way. We really want Corey to come back. We are negotiating with Corey.”
According to Hilaire, the team should have something to announce one way or the other in the next couple of weeks with LaJoie.
“Just trying to dot the I’s and cross the T’s to work the deal with him and finish it up,” Hilaire explained. “I think in a couple of weeks we’ll know where we’re going.”
Hilaire said the technical alliance did not surface over the last couple of weeks, but rather the deal had been in the works for, “Three or four months probably. We were hoping to wrap it up quicker, but they had cars in the Chase and that kind of slowed it down. We were trying to figure out what cars we were going to get — it’s all cars from their existing inventory…”
The deal with Stewart-Haas Racing is a one-year deal and if things go well, Hilarie said he will discuss moving forward for another season when the Gen-7 cars move into the sport. Overall, Hilaire is looking to totally upgrade his organization in 2020.
The team owner said that ideally he would like to improve four to five spots from where they have run in 2019. Next on tap is improving their motor program.
“Now we’re working on our motor program,” said Hilaire. “We think we’ll be very competitive. Are we going to win races? I’m not going to say that — speedway races anything can happen — but as far as mile and a halfs and short tracks we’ll be much more competitive.”
Go Fas Racing has recorded seven top-20 finishes so far this season, which is an all-time high for the organization. They will look to take the next step forward in 2020.
