It turns out that Joe Gibbs is quite the poacher. His team, Joe Gibbs Racing, recently announced their driver lineup for the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series, and fellow team owners Tony Stewart and Richard Childress might not be too happy about it. Out of the drivers joining the team, part-time and full-time, are Sheldon Creed and Aric Almirola. Creed was a part of Richard Childress Racing last season in the Xfinity Series and Almirola was a part of Stewart-Haas Racing’s Cup Series program.

Almirola had plans of retiring from NASCAR after the 2022 Cup Series season but was persuaded into one more full-time Cup season by SHR. This time, however, he has left Tony Stewart’s team for good but not completely retired from the sport. The veteran’s addition will be a useful one to the JGR Xfinity Series program which will have several younger drivers who will have a lot to learn.

Why did Sheldon Creed and Aric Almirola leave their previous teams?

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Twitter page called it a new era as they unveiled the new faces of the team’s Xfinity Series program. “A new era. Our 2024 Xfinity team will field four Toyota GR Supras – two with full-time drivers and two with a rotating schedule of part-time drivers. The lineup will be headlined by Sheldon Creed driving the No. 18 GR Supra and Chandler Smith piloting the No. 81 GR Supra. Aric Almirola and John Hunter Nemechek will split driving duties of the team’s No. 20 entry while the No. 19 GR Supra will be driven by Ryan Truex, William Sawalich, Joe Graf Jr., and Taylor Gray,” the tweet read.

Sheldon Creed arguably had the most controversial exit of the season. The 26-year-old driver was a part of Richard Childress Racing last year but it was announced well before the finale that he wouldn’t be part of the team. At the penultimate race in Martinsville, Creed needed a win to qualify for the championship race in Phoenix. However, his attempt to do so ended in disaster as he ended up taking out teammate Austin Hill, who would’ve made it on points, and Creed himself failed to get the job done. Creed was publicly chastised by both his teammate and boss, making for a horrific send-off.

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As far as Aric Almirola goes, the veteran was persuaded by Tony Stewart to compete one more year as a full-time racer in 2023 in the Cup Series. At the end of the season, he announced his exit. A lot of people believed that he would announce his retirement shortly but ended up joining the team which gave him his first start in both the Cup and Xfinity Series.

It turns out that a complete retirement from the sport is not what the 39-year-old had in mind. After he was officially announced as a part-time driver for Joe Gibbs, Almirola expressed what was going wrong in the Cup and that he had a lot to give to his new team.

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Aric Almirola finds himself still very much in racing. However, the experienced racer is not complaining about anything. It was just that the Cup Series schedule which was getting way too hectic for him.

“I feel like I still have a lot left to give to this sport,” Almirola said as per NASCAR.com. “I just needed to slow down. When you’re Cup racing, I felt like I was on the treadmill at like 15 miles per hour like as fast as it would go, and you are not allowed to stop it. Like you just had to keep running as fast as you could go, and I just got to the point where I felt my legs were going to give out and I was going to get spit off the back of the treadmill.”

Do you think the veteran racer can have a successful few races with JGR in the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series? Let us know your thoughts.

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