Chandler Smith

The rookie Xfinity Series season was a success for Smith last year. He'd race to one win and 13 Top-10 finishes as well as a surprising ninth-place points finish. Smith moves on from Kaulig Racing and into Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 81 Toyota for 2024. The young talent will be an interesting prospect for the upcoming season. Smith will be paired with Jeff Meendering at crew chief. The veteran has 228 Xfinity Series starts under his belt and eight victories, all with very young drivers. That's good news for Smith. His 36 starts of experience in this division of NASCAR is just scratching the surface, and he's in need of a talent like Meendering. Joe Gibbs Racing always has good cars and support, so this is a driver and team situation that is poised to grow and maybe quicker than we give them credit.

After an impressive five-win, 28 Top-10 finish campaign for Kaulig Racing last season, AJ Allmendinger makes the move to full-time racing in the NASCAR Cup Series this season. The fantastic car and Kaulig team that helped him to make that happen have tabbed Smith to continue on with that great work in the Xfinity Series. The young driver comes over from the Craftsman Truck Series where he piloted a KBM Toyota to five wins and 25 Top-10 finishes over the past two campaigns. Smith was a championship contender in that division of NASCAR, but came up short of the title the last two seasons. The No. 16 Chevrolet team is well established now and has the sponsorship, leadership and excellence to propel Smith to wins and title contention in the Xfinity Series.

Last season was the young Georgian's first full-time season in the truck series. Smith left quite an impression after his two-win, nine Top 10 performance. The No. 18 Toyota was strong, and Smith got better with each start in 2021. He finished the campaign strong with his two victories coming in the last five events of last season. Smith will carry that momentum into 2022 and look to propel this team towards a championship run. The young driver will be paired with crew chief, Danny Stockman, once again and they'll look to continue building on what they established last year. At just 19-years-old, Smith still has much to learn but it appears he has loads of talent.

The young prospect completed a 12-race schedule last season for KBM. It was a very promising campaign with Smith grabbing five Top-5 finishes in those dozen starts. There was some inconsistency early in the schedule, but Smith settled in nicely posting most of those good finishes in the stretch run. He should carry that momentum into 2021 as Kyle Busch Motorsports moves him into full-time competition and the team's No. 18 Toyota truck. This is the same team that Christian Eckes raced last season to the tune of seven Top-5 and 11 Top-10 finishes. KBM expects more from this team and they're going to look to Smith to deliver in his first full season. The young driver will look to crew chief Danny Stockman to mentor his efforts in pursuit of Rookie of the Year this season.

This was easily the most successful and dominant of the multi-driver teams in the Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series in 2019. The team featured Christian Eckes and Brandon Jones mostly, but threw in a dash of Kyle Busch and other drivers for good measure. It all added up to six victories, 15 Top-5 and 17 Top-10 finishes. Those would be championship winning numbers were it not for the driver rotation. Busch was responsible for five of the six wins, and Greg Biffle picked up the other one with a surprising one-off start at Texas. We should see a similar driver lineup for 2020. Busch will get the maximum allowed of five starts, Smith should see the bulk of the remaining starts and Jones could equal or better the four starts he had with the team last season. You can count on this team being strong each weekend, and a threat to win every time Busch races.