Last week, Spire Motorsports made the unexpected move of moving on from Corey LaJoie, who has driven the team’s No. 7 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in the NASCAR Cup Series since the 2021 season. Despite having another year on his contract, LaJoie will be released from his deal a year early at the conclusion of the 2024 season.
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In the first episode of his Stacking Pennies podcast since the news broke, LaJoie opened up on his newly found free agency status, and the emotions of losing your ride. While LaJoie didn’t expect to be heading into the offseason looking for a new gig, he says uncertainty is not a new thing for him.
“I had some realizations. Everywhere that I’ve been has always been one-year deals, so this position that I find myself in currently isn’t uncomfortable,” LaJoie explained. “It’s not someplace I’ve never been before.
“You go through all the emotions, mad, sad,” LaJoie continued. “I think where I’m at currently a week removed is that I’m super appreciative. Super appreciative of [team co-owners] Jeff [Dickerson] and T.J. [Puchyr] and for Spire giving me the opportunity, for believing in me from the jump when we were trying to whiteboard this thing and what we’ve grown it to has been pretty cool.”
LaJoie has spent 129 races, exactly half of his NASCAR Cup Series career, in a Spire Motorsports machine. In his time with Spire, LaJoie has recorded all four of his career top-five finishes and six of his nine top-10s. LaJoie also achieved his career-best points ranking (25th) last season.
The Spire team, which served more as a punchline for jokes within the sport than a top-tier contending team in its inception, began to build around LaJoie as the team’s featured driver in 2021. The driver and team began to grow together and had become quite the formidable combination in 2023 before slightly regressing this season.
LaJoie hates that he’ll always feel a sense of unfinished business, personally, with his Spire Motorsports tenure.
“I do hate that we weren’t able to see it through,” LaJoie stated. “We weren’t able to kind of adjust the [No.] 7 team and kind of turn the right knobs to get performance where we needed it. Also, I made too many mistakes behind the wheel this year. There were several that took us out of contention for some good results.”
With his future up in the air, LaJoie is focused on finishing out his time at Spire on a high note, and he seemed very optimistic that there will be a landing spot for him in the near future.
“It’s onward and upward,” LaJoie said with optimism. “I don’t know what the next step is. It’s been a unique situation with all the variables that are in play, but nonetheless, I am at peace with it. I’m excited about what the next chapter holds, and I’m pretty motivated to still be the first one that puts a win banner on the wall at Spire and a trophy in the trophy case on the Cup side there and continue to finish this thing strong the last 14 races.”
The final 14 races of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season will serve as a job interview for LaJoie, who is now looking for a ride. Expect LaJoie to do whatever it takes to snag solid results down the stretch.
