On a Saturday edition of SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s The Front Stretch, Cory Roper announced that he will return to his family-owned Roper Racing Team No. 04 machine for the 2024 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway.
“The only race that I have right now that I know I’m going to drive this year is Daytona,” Roper stated on the show. “Bruce has taken this thing and new body, a new floor plan, we even cut the front clip on it and moved it. I am, I can’t tell you how excited I am to get into it, because I know it’s right. I’m looking forward to it. Truck is about put together and ready to go. My brothers have just about got it done, and I can’t wait.”
While Daytona is the only confirmed race for Roper during the 2024 season, the driver stated toward the end of the interview that he has aspirations to also run the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event at Talladega Superspeedway.
“We’re planning on making Talladega. I do kind of have that one on the books that I may drive,” Roper explained.
Roper, 46, has made 46 starts in NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series competition, but after a 16-race campaign in 2021, the driver missed all of the 2022 season and competed in just three races last season.
The native of Vernon, Texas wants to participate as a driver as long as he can in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, but admits he is shifting toward trying to make his race team a successful business, and if all goes well, he hopes for expansion down the road.
“I want to drive as long as I can. It’s going to be a limited schedule, but maybe in the future, we’ll have full-time drivers and another truck we can take every once in a while and go have fun with,” Roper said. “Kind of how we always planned this to be.”
Roper has allied with Cook Racing Technologies and Spire Motorsports and will share the truck with Marco Andretti, who will run seven races this season in the No. 04 Chevrolet Silverado. Roper speaks highly of Andretti’s talent behind the wheel and feels the No. 04 team should be a solid contender in Andretti’s stint behind the wheel this year.
“Well, I know he has got the talent and Bruce has the talent and the drive. I think they’re going to be fast,” Roper predicted. “I think the expectation is to go out there and run up front. I think he’s going to do fine. I think we’ll have really good pieces, especially with all of the technology and stuff we’ll be able to bring, the expectation is to go run for top-10 finishes. I don’t think there’s any reason we can’t do that.”
In addition to himself and Andretti, Roper says the team is in talks with several other drivers to run some races in the No. 04 Chevrolet Silverado this season, but whether those talks culminate in starts for the young racers will all come down to sponsorship funds.
“We’ve got a couple [of drivers] on the radar that we’re talking to. The sad thing about this business like everybody knows that is listening is that it all comes down to funds,” Roper stated. “But yeah we have a couple of new drivers that I would love to see get the opportunity.”
Roper even pulled back the veil a little bit on one of the drivers his team is talking to who is a road racing specialist.
“There’s also another new driver that runs some road courses in the Lamborghinis as part of our sponsorship package that I want to see get in one of these trucks too,” Roper said. “So, we’ll see where the funds go, and we’ll make those announcements whenever we kind of have something finalized. Looking forward to it. We’re looking at two or three of them that we’ll put in these trucks that are new ones.”
Over the last five NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series seasons, the Roper Racing Team has competed in 63 events as a part-time team. The hard-nosed racers have collected two top-five finishes and five top-10s.
To date, the best finish for the No. 04 team was a third-place effort with Roper behind the wheel at Daytona International Speedway in the 2021 season-opening race.
