By the time Corey LaJoie sat down with the head of talent at Amazon, the company had already done its homework on him. It just hadn’t done it where anyone would expect. LaJoie was hired after a single interview, and the reason, he says, had been quietly piling up long before he ever walked into the room.
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“They told me, like, hey, you’ve got hundreds of hours of tape that we’ve listened to on your podcast on how you carry not only yourself but how you represent the sport and how you engage with these drivers,” LaJoie explained on Clear 28 Agency via X.
The former Spire Motorsports driver stepped away from full-time Cup competition after the 2024 season. In January 2025, he announced a limited schedule with Rick Ware Racing alongside his new role as an analyst for Prime Video’s five-race NASCAR package.
His selection, however, was not based solely on his racing résumé. The work he had already put into ‘Stacking Pennies’ had helped demonstrate that he could bring a driver’s perspective to the broadcast.
LaJoie launched the podcast in 2021, building a platform that went beyond reviewing race results. Its premise of turning small gains into bigger success also inspired the No. 01 he drove for Rick Ware Racing and his Stacking Pennies Performance brand. Over time, the show gave Amazon an extensive record of his communication style and understanding of NASCAR.
The production team itself was another reason the opportunity stood out. LaJoie acknowledged the caliber of the people he would be working with and how much choice they had when selecting talent.
“They told me, I mean, that’s such an incredible group to work with. Most of those guys are Thursday Night Football guys, so they are the elite of the elite. They could go pick anybody they wanted to,” he said.
Despite that pool of potential candidates, LaJoie’s podcast helped him stand out. Rather than relying only on a résumé or a formal interview, Amazon could hear how he discussed racing and interacted with the people at its centre.
His relationships with fellow drivers were particularly valuable. Having grown up around many of NASCAR’s competitors and raced against them himself, LaJoie could speak with them from a position of familiarity and shared experience.
“You talk to them because you know them well personally; you’ve grown up with these guys too,” he explained.
That connection gave him a different route into conversations about the sport. These bonds were not simply professional contacts developed for television; they were built through years spent competing in the same environment. That background helped him discuss drivers as people as well as competitors, adding context that could be difficult to capture through results alone.
LaJoie also brought technical knowledge that came directly from his time behind the wheel. Having driven on the same tracks and experienced the demands of Cup Series competition, he could explain what drivers face in ways grounded in firsthand experience.
“You talk to them as another competitor because you are competing against them,” he added, before pointing to another part of his appeal: “And you also talk with a high level of knowledge because you drove the car on these racetracks.”
From race wins to garage relationships
The move to television also changed how LaJoie viewed success in NASCAR. After working on Prime Video’s five-race package, he reflected on the importance of relationships built throughout the garage, rather than measuring a career exclusively through race results.
As a driver, his attention had naturally centered on performance and delivering for his team, sponsors, and fans. The broadcast role allowed him to view the sport from a wider angle, recognising that a driver’s contribution and career cannot always be reduced to a finishing position.
The transition also challenged his expectations of what an analyst needed to be. LaJoie admitted that he initially believed he had to be exceptionally polished and perfectly prepared before speaking on television.
“I thought I had to be the most well-spoken,” he said of his early expectations.
Eventually, he realised that he did not need to abandon the conversational style he had developed through his podcast. His racing experience gave him the technical foundation, while his familiarity with drivers helped him explain the human side of the competition. The combination allowed him to share informed analysis without sounding overly rehearsed.
That is what made his existing work valuable to Amazon. Stacking Pennies had already demonstrated how LaJoie could communicate his knowledge, engage with competitors, and discuss NASCAR beyond the immediate pressure of racing every weekend. The broadcasting role gave those skills a wider platform.
LaJoie has said he enjoys television and the opportunity it provides to talk about racing and life, and that he would continue as long as NASCAR wants him. His move into broadcasting shows how the experience he built behind the microphone helped open a new path in the sport after full-time Cup competition.