Spire Signs Travis Peterson As No. 71 NASCAR Chevy Crew Chief
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Spire Motorsports is undergoing a significant personnel change for the 2025 racing season, bringing in Michael McDowell to drive the No. 71 Chevy Camaro ZL1 next year. Now, the organization has announced who will sit atop the pit box for the McDowell team: experienced race engineer Travis Peterson.
Peterson has worked with McDowell for several years, serving as race engineer for the No. 34 Ford Mustang Dark Horse driven by McDowell for Front Row Motorsports since 2023. Prior to that, he held a position with the No. 17 Mustang team of Chris Buescher, fielded by Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. He has history with The Bow Tie as well – he worked alongside crew chief Greg Ives as engineer for the No. 88 Chevy of Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Hendrick Motorsports.
“It’s exciting to have Travis Peterson join Spire Motorsports,” said Spire Motorsports president Doug Duchardt in a team release. “The first time Travis and I worked together was when Greg Ives and Travis came to Hendrick Motorsports to be the crew chief and the engineer for the No. 88 car with Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. I got to spend time with Travis there as a young engineer and it’s exciting to see how he has grown into a leader and a crew chief.”
Peterson will join Rodney Childers and Luke Lambert, Spire’s other two crew chiefs. Childers is also a recent transplant from Ford, having worked for Stewart-Haas Racing, which will cease operations at the end of 2024.
“It is a very exciting opportunity,” said Peterson. “Michael [McDowell] and I had the opportunity to meet with Doug [Duchardt] and [Jeff] Dickerson and they really sold us on the vision of where Spire is going and how we could be big role players in building the organization. I think having that skin in the game was important to both of us. The opportunity in front of us has all the potential to be very rewarding.”
In other Spire Motorsports news, the team recently announced that it will no longer field the No. 7 Camaro for Corey LaJoie. At this time, it’s not clear who will drive this entry.
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Yawn….
how can they run a 25 Camaro when they stopped making them in very early 24???
Since the Camaro was in production when it was introduced to NASCAR a few years ago, it can still be raced even though it’s been discontinued.
Everybody knows there’s nothing “production” about any of those cars.
They’ve become the “Botox” / “Implant” equivalents of the racing world.
Heck…they could run Ford Galaxie 500’s and Olds Cutlass’s if it made the series money.
Realism / believability is quickly becoming an important customer expectation and NASCAR has been quickly going in the opposite direction.
Original, authentic and unrestored / unaltered is the future.