Sam Hornish Jr. Pilots No. 54 Monster Energy Toyota in Final Scheduled Race of 2014

This week the No. 54 Monster Energy seat will again see 35-year-old driver Sam Hornish Jr. in the Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) Camry. Hornish, a familiar face this year at JGR, along with the now five-time 2014 winners, looks forward to week 27 running the VisitMyrtleBeach.com 300 at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta. The team drives into the Bluegrass-state event, on a race high, having recently won the NASCAR Nationwide Series event at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway, with driver Kyle Busch.

Hornish has six starts already under his belt in the black No. 54 Camry this year and one additional Nationwide Series entry with the team’s No. 20 Toyota. Four top-five finishes were accomplished at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn and Iowa Speedway in Newton, twice, with the spring event including a trip to victory lane. Hornish also achieved pole-qualifying starts at Talladega and the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington. Difficult events for Hornish this year included Road America in Elkhart Lake Wisconsin, where weather played a role in deterring his top-five run, then again at Mid-Ohio and at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, where engine issues forced Hornish to the garage with incomplete finishes.

With momentum from the week 25 win that saw a dominant performance from the pole qualifying spot, the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 54 group and owner J.D. Gibbs continue to target first place in the series’ Owner’s Championship battle, now only 15 points behind the No. 22 Penske Ford. This week, with the help of already race winner Hornish, they hope to reduce that deficit and keep the No. 54 headed on the right track for a championship. 

In the earlier Kentucky Speedway race this year Busch and Monster Energy came close to accomplishing a win as they began the race in second place and worked to the lead, when a late-race caution forced one last restart that proved difficult for the No. 54 Camry, who went from first place to a third-place finish on a hot Friday night. Although not the finish Busch and their veteran crew chief Adam Stevens hoped for, the JGR unit has regrouped and will work hard this weekend to finish what they started in the spring, this time with Hornish who, along with Stevens, is looking for his first Nationwide Series victory on the 1.5-mile track.

KBM PR