Right from the get-go, Jimmie Johnson has taken bold decisions as a NASCAR team owner. In 2023, after Johnson joined the garage, Petty GMS Racing rebranded to Legacy Motor Club, taking out the iconic Petty name. A year later, Johnson, a lifelong loyalist of Chevrolet, changed allegiances to Toyota. Then, a year later, he became the majority owner. And another bold step Johnson took was how he operated his team in its infancy without a Godfather team, something he recently opened up on.

Jimmie Johnson admits to the challenges of making his own path as an owner

During a recent episode of the Stacking Pennies podcast, Johnson was asked what the challenges have been in not paying the $8 million premium to a team like JGR.

“They have full transparency, essentially a car build as well. So if you think of the days of Furniture Row Racing, very similar situation to that. We looked at that number and felt that we could build it. It’ll take a few years,” he explained.

What Johnson might’ve been referring to with the Furniture Row Racing mention was the unfortunate ending to the championship-winning team. In 2018, the team suddenly announced its closure, which, many years later, was revealed to be caused by mounting bills to JGR because of their alliance. As Jeff Gluck pointed out, “JGR ran them out of business”,  with the costs going from $3 million to $10 million per year.

Having said that, Johnson touched on the aero partnership he now has with JGR, which he announced earlier this year as a ‘collaboration.’ “As time has gone on and the good faith that we have shown, we’ve been able to now be in partnership with Joe Gibbs Racing on the aero side. So that’s new for us this year. So Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing, Legacy are all partners on the aero program.”

Yet, Jimmie Johnson mentioned that there are new challenges. He claimed that it wasn’t like ‘flipping a switch’ and instead, they are finding new ways of building the car and have to now re-contextualise and re-evaluate the data they have collected over the past few years.

“We’ve built a parallel path, and now all of our numbers have to be recorrelated. And so that’s the journey we’re on right now. We performed a little better last year on the mile and halves, but now all of that information we built and our notebook, we’ve literally had to throw it away and start over again,” he described.

While a new NASCAR team prefers to ally with an already established team – examples of that would be Spire Motorsports with Hendrick Motorsports or 23XI Racing with Joe Gibbs Racing – for Legacy Motor Club, Johnson didn’t want to partner up with an established team. And in doing so, he saved $8 million a year, as the findings from the NASCAR-23XI lawsuit revealed.

But in taking that route, his team has suffered through a rough period of tumbles where they’ve had no wins and just a handful of top 5s and top 10s over the past two seasons. Between 2024 and 2025, Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek recorded 12 top 10 finishes and 7 top 5 finishes combined. In 2026, Jones has had 2 top 10 finishes, while Nemechek is still finding his footing this season.

Some other challenges Johnson pointed out for Legacy were around simulators and managing software. In basic terms, they have the data, but they don’t have the device to put it into.

But the 7x Cup champion was hopeful that in the future, they would be an independent team with their own tools, simulators, and software infrastructure, which they’re already working on. And a big step in that direction could be in 2027, when Legacy takes a massive step.

Johnson is ready to take on more on his plate for 2027

One would think that, given their results from the last few seasons, Legacy Motor Club would ideally choose to focus its resources on what they already have – two cars. But that’s not how Jimmie Johnson thinks. Continuing his trend of taking big, bold steps as an owner, Johnson announced earlier this season that his team would be expanding from a two-car team to a three-car team in 2027.

“Without question, we will have a third car on the grid next year. All the benefits that come with running an additional car will help speed up our process,” he said.

However, in the recent Stacking Pennies appearance, he admitted that while there would be more challenges, there would also be benefits to having a third car.

“From a competition standpoint, you want to max it out if you can, if you can keep the lights on. From a commercial standpoint, it really is a pathway to profitability. When you look at a two-car team, and we’re at 140 people, we don’t need 70 more to run the third car. It’s 25 to 30 more people. So the skills of the economy really start making sense,” he explained.