Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time NASCAR Cup champion tied with legends such as Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, is now focused on expanding his legacy as co-owner of the Legacy Motor Club (LMC). After acquiring Richard Petty Motorsports and rebranding it as Legacy Motor Club in January 2023, Johnson has been steadily transforming the organization into a competitive force within NASCAR’s Cup Series. The team, featuring drivers Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek, has shown promising progress as the 2024 season unfolds.

Heading into the street race in Chicago on Sunday, Erik Jones sits on the playoff bubble at 16th place, while John Hunter Nemechek holds 23rd position. Both drivers still have the opportunity to clinch a playoff spot if either wins one of the eight remaining races in the regular season. Jones benefits from stronger points standings that might secure him a place in the playoffs without a win, whereas Nemechek faces a must-win scenario to advance to the 16-driver, 10-race postseason.

Strong Performances Highlight Team’s Growing Potential

Erik Jones, despite going winless this season, has improved his results with two top-five finishes—doubling his total from earlier in the year—and three top-ten appearances. His best race came last Saturday night at Atlanta, where he placed fifth. Meanwhile, John Hunter Nemechek has shown notable advancement as well, matching last season’s top-five tally and surpassing the number of top tens from last year with six so far in 2024.

The recent improvement of Legacy Motor Club has caught attention in the NASCAR community. On the NASCAR Inside The Race podcast, Bozi Tatarevic spoke alongside experts Steve Letarte, Todd Gordon, and Kyle Petty, discussing how Johnson’s vision is bringing the team forward steadily but deliberately.

Everybody was saying that Legacy was going to get there last year but I said it’s going to take a year,

Todd Gordon remarked, emphasizing the importance of patience.

Look at the offseason hires, they brought in some really good people, they got to the point they could digest the information and we’re seeing the progression this year of what people expected to happen last year.

Gordon also highlighted how Legacy Motor Club has been developing its own technical resources, independent from traditional Toyota groups like Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), allowing them to tailor their approach.

The Toyota tools are getting kind of solidified because they have groups within Legacy that are helping them kind of drive them forward. Their own TRD tools not JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing, which is Toyota’s premier team in Cup) tools and they’re getting ahold of, how they can manage that data and they’ve put good people in place.

So I feel like this is a trajectory that Jimmie had a vision of. It just is a much longer process than I think people want to give it credit.

Tatarevic echoed this perspective, explaining how Legacy’s gradual build-up of proprietary technical knowledge and team capability has been critical.

I think a lot of people maybe overestimated (Legacy’s expected progression), and I fully agree with Todd, because the way the tools work is Toyota Racing has a set of tools and a database, so it’s like you’re building a house,

Tatarevic said. He added that while Toyota Racing Development (TRD) provides essential equipment and guidance,

What Legacy has had to do for the last two or three years is build each of these houses individually based on the basic tools that TRD gives them, which is a significant amount but it doesn’t give you that last 2 or 3 percent that makes you competitive.

Legacy has begun constructing a fully independent technical database and has strengthened various team aspects such as pit crews.

They’re now competing in the top 10. If you look at the pit crew rankings, a lot of weeks you’ll see one of those two pit crews show up in the top 10. So they’re putting all the pieces together not just from the technical information but the people are getting there too.

Team Cohesion Improving with Strategic Hires and Leadership

The progress at Legacy Motor Club has also been driven by significant changes in personnel. Erik Jones pointed out that the team has spent considerable time reorganizing its staff to improve communication and workflow.

It took a solid six-to-eight months probably to break that down and then beyond that, just hiring more people,

Jones explained during a Friday media session in Chicago.

We were pretty short-staffed in our engineering department. It took all that time to really get everybody in their right position and figuring out what they were going to be doing.

Jones noted that improving organization and leadership has created a better environment where ideas flow more freely.

Now, I feel like everybody’s really in the flow of it and (there’s) a lot more open communication between everybody just knowing what’s going on, who’s working on what, given enough forum for guys to come up with new ideas and figure things out.

It just took some organization. There was just a stretch where we didn’t have the leadership in place and now, I feel like our leadership group is really strong,

Jones concluded.

A Promising Future for Jimmie Johnson’s Legacy Motor Club

Legacy Motor Club is quietly advancing within NASCAR’s Cup Series, driven by a thoughtful and deliberate approach that embraces growth in technical expertise, leadership, and team cohesion. While the climb to championship contention requires more time than some anticipated, the foundation laid by Jimmie Johnson and his co-owners demonstrates a commitment to sustained success.

As the 2024 season moves toward the playoffs, both Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek have the opportunity to prove the team‘s progress in highly competitive races. Should Legacy continue on this upward path, its presence within NASCAR’s elite ranks is poised to strengthen further, validating Johnson’s vision of building a lasting racing legacy beyond his own storied driving career.