MARTINSVILLE, Va.: Reigning NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series champion Brett Moffitt received an early Christmas present this week from GMS Racing.
The organization announced Friday that Moffitt will return to the team next season as part of the team’s two-full time entries alongside Sheldon Creed and a part-time effort to be filled by K&N East Series champion Sam Mayer.
For Moffitt, it’s nice to have his plans set for the impending season after years of teetering on whether he’d be racing or watching from the sidelines.
And while Moffitt thought he was safe and sound for 2020, he also knew nothing was confirmed until the ink was dry on the contract.
“Obviously until papers are signed its always in the back of your mind because I’ve had other teams lead me astray in that direction, but everyone at GMS was very reassuring,” said Moffitt Friday afternoon at Martinsville Speedway. “Coming into this deal, we did a one-year deal and as long as the shoe fit where I could fill in the role of being the anchor, the house car and helping these younger kids develop quicker, then it was the road we all wanted to go down.”
With options on the table to return to Xfinity or Cup Series next season, the opportunity to win races and contend for a championship made it a no-brainer for the Grimes, Iowa native.
“I get to stay in winning equipment and win races,” added Moffitt. “Ever since halfway through the year, I was confident that I would be back and then its just good within this past week we got it finalized.”
While his sponsorship lineup for the 2020 season wasn’t announced on Friday, Moffitt gave a glimpse to some support that will return with him next season in his third full-time season of
Truck Series competition.
“I think we’ll have a lot of (sponsors) returning,” he offered. “CMR will be on the truck next year for a number of races. The Iowa sponsorship will be the same with Destiny Homes and Genesis Homes and all of their suppliers, so it will be good.”
This season, Moffitt replaced Johnny Sauter who joined GMS in 2016 after a lengthy stint at ThorSport Racing.
Sauter won the championship in his first season with the organization but by the end of the 2019 season, the combination wasn’t working anymore and Moffitt being rideless after Austin Hill was tapped to join Hattori Racing in 2019 – the gamble for the Statesville, N.C.-based organization to roll with a younger driver with a lot of experience at just 26 years old to work with a stable of young drivers almost immediately started to pay off.
“I’ve been around a lot; I have a lot of knowledge,” Moffitt explained. “Sometimes you don’t realize what you know or what others don’t know. I think as the year went on, I am able to help them more and more in different ways that maybe at the beginning of the year I didn’t think about because I assumed they knew it.
“But between myself and working with Josh Wise (driver and fitness coach) and Josh pushes me to be better. It’s insight. We’ll get talking. Normally, me and Sheldon work out with Josh twice a week, at least and after the workout or before the workout whatever we’ll start talking about the upcoming race or the past race and we’ll start talking and just spitballing and then all of a sudden you come out of there like “wow,” we just learned a lot from each other and I’m still learning. It’s benefiting myself and hopefully benefiting them in a good way.”
While Moffitt admitted that his start to the season didn’t go as hoped, the faith in himself and his crew chief Jerry Baxter eventually led the team back to a path of consistency and winning races.
Moffitt also said his ability to work with an underdog team such as Hattori Racing and being able to learn more about the trucks there has allowed him to apply certain fundamentals to the more heavily funded and support GMS Racing team this season that has allowed the No. 24 team to strengthen at the most critical part of the Truck Series schedule.
“I’ve feel like I’ve always really applied myself on chassis setup itself and body builds on the trucks and stuff like that,” he said. “I couldn’t sit here and setup a truck completely and go race it, but I know the ideas behind what one team did. There were tracks last year we really struggled at and there were tracks last year that we were really good at.
“GMS has tracks at that they’ve been really good at historically and tracks they’ve struggled. Some of those struggle tracks overlay with what was good last year and I was able to develop setups for that that were more successful, and we put them in, and it worked. It’s bringing every bit of knowledge you have and make the best of both worlds.”
While Moffitt isn’t guaranteed a spot in the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway next month nor the opportunity to become the series’ first back-to-back champion to win with different organizations, the NASCAR Next alumnus is already thinking ahead to next season and the overall objective.
“I’m in this position to win races and championships. I need to deliver that to Mr. (Maury) Gallagher (team owner), that’s why he has me here. I feel good about this year. Like I said, we got off to a rocky start, but I feel like we’re where we need to be now.
“We just need to continue winning and build a powerhouse team to where multiple trucks on the team are winning regularly and keep going.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
