Legacy Motor Club has lined up a huge group of celebrity investors, with musician Darius Rucker the only one to be revealed so far, according to team co-owner Jimmie Johnson.
In March, Rucker announced he had become an investor in Legacy, which is the team Johnson and Knighthead Capital Management rebranded in 2023 and overhauled from its days as GMS Racing and Richard Petty Motorsports. The team is now aligned with Toyota, has two cars in the NASCAR Cup Series this season and is preparing to expand to three cars next year. It also worked with McLaren to provide an engineer and pit crew members for one of its Indy 500 entries last month.
“We have a huge group of celebrity investors, and we look forward to making that formal announcement with all 27 of them,” Johnson said. “But Darius and a couple more will be announced as we kind of get into the early summer stretch — but these are first and foremost friends and people that are passionate about motorsports. Some are friends in music, sport, motorsport, various aspects of business, quite notable as well — even some action-sports guys that really want to be a part of this journey and see what’s going on in motorsports and the world of NASCAR, and the opportunity to help amplify that.
“So we’re really excited at Legacy about the back half of the year and some of the stuff we’re going to bring and smartly step into, but I think our paddock or garage area in NASCAR in general is really taking a shift at looking at things differently, more so than I have seen in the past as a competitor. So I think we’re really moving in the right direction. It’s just going to take a little time to get the flywheel spinning.”
Johnson is now in his fourth season as a Cup Series team owner. He’s aiming to make Legacy independent in the long term, in which it operates its own cars without a pricey alliance with Toyota’s flagship team, Joe Gibbs Racing. However, the team is working with JGR this year on aerodynamic R&D.
Legacy has not won a Cup Series race since the new ownership took over, but Johnson sees signs of progress. Erik Jones is currently 21st in the Cup Series standings, while John Hunter Nemechek is 28th. The team has yet to reveal who its third driver will be for next year, but The Athletic has tipped 23XI Racing’s Riley Herbst as the top candidate.
Johnson wishes growth was coming quicker. Among Legacy’s challenges is that there is less practice and testing time in NASCAR, and that the car model used in the Cup Series is far different than the one used in the lower-tier series, making it harder for drivers to adjust to the top level.
“We’re definitely making great progress,” Johnson said. “We’re dialing in our correlation and bringing a much better product to the racetrack and that’s what is showing right now. So having patience as an owner and trying to build a team from the ground up is something I knew I needed to bring into this but it’s certainly been tested. … We’re making steady progress. Of course, I wish it was faster.”