Well, maybe Jeffrey Earnhardt’s time with iK9 and Joe Gibbs Racing is not over after all.
This week, the Xtreme Concepts Racing team (which has a JGR alliance) was scheduled to bring their No. 81 Toyota Supra to Daytona International Speedway with Earnhardt behind the wheel to battle for a win. However, they withdrew from the race on Wednesday.
iK9 had been removed from the partners page at Joe Gibbs Racing’s website (it’s still gone as of this post) as well on Wednesday which fueled speculation that the iK9 sponsorship on JGR’s Xfinity Series team had fallen through.
When JGR’s No. 18 Xfinity Series hauler arrived in Daytona, it was missing iK9 decals. However, in a strange twist, iK9 decals were added back onto the top deck of the hauler on Thursday.
Man, this iK9 mystery deepens. From this morning, pic 1 is the deck on the Gibbs Xfinity hauler with nothing on the left. Pic 2 is someone adding a decal a few minutes later. Abracadabra, iK9 is back in pic 3! pic.twitter.com/7fBRY6yTiR
— Drunken Brian France (@DrunkBrianF) July 4, 2019
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So, what does this mean? Obviously it means that JGR is still aligned with the company or they would not have added the decals back to the hauler. The company as also said they are still supporting Jeffrey Earnhardt. Perhaps there was a slight snag that has since been resolved.