Jimmie Johnson and Legacy Motor Club are expanding their racing program, adding a third charter in 2027, but that’s not all. The seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion wants to try his luck in IndyCar. Johnson will reunite with one of his former teammates to debut his team at the Indy 500, the greatest race of the IndyCar series this year.

Arrow McLaren has just announced that it will partner with Jimmie Johnson and his team, Legacy Motor Club, for the 2026 Indy 500 race. With the announcement, the team continues its tradition of partnering with NASCAR champions and teams at the Indy 500.

For the last two years, Arrow McLaren and its Indy team had been working with Hendrick Motorsports for a one-off IndyCar start at the Indianapolis 500. It allowed Kyle Larson to test his skills in the race multiple times. The collaboration earned them attention as Larson tried to complete the Coca-Cola 600 and the Indy 500 in the same weekend for two years. Trying to build on that success, team principal Tony Kanaan thought it was a great idea to work with better drivers and teams.

“We’re not ******* around,” Kanaan told the media. “After the Kyle Larson effect, the challenge was, ‘What are we going to do?’ Not to match popularity, but in talent. If you look at the history of that car, it’s had some winners in it before, with Montoya and me, and Kyle was as talented a guy as you could ever ask for. So finding the right person to take the car and step it up even more was what we needed, so it was looking at names to be able to win the Indy 500.

Ryan’s that guy for us, but then it was looking at how do we surround that car with Ryan with other champions, so that started the conversation with me and Zak, and then we started talking about Jimmie, and it came together with all of us working together for this project. And like I said, we’re not ******* around with this in any way.”

Arrow McLaren and Legacy Motor Club will work now to run the No. 31 car, and Johnson will reunite with his former teammate, Kanaan, in this partnership. The No. 31 will be driven by Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2012 IndyCar champion who won the Indy 500 race in 2014 with Andretti Autosport. Brian Campe, a key member of the Hendrick/Larson program, will be their race strategist.

Personnel from Legacy Motor Club have already started training for pit stops, as they will send over their Cup Series pit crew to handle Ryan’s race. Arrow McLaren is trying its best to bring forward the best talent in every department to complement RHR’s driving.

According to Campe, the director of advanced engineering at Legacy, it is like a dream team, similar to how the NBA operates with the best players it can find. Given Kanaan and Johnson’s relationship, this one-off endeavor has the potential to turn into something more concrete.

Johnson is no stranger to the IndyCar Series. He competed in the series four years ago with Chip Ganassi Racing, where Kanaan was his teammate. Further, he served as former IndyCar driver Dario Franchitti’s crew chief at the 2026 Craftsman Truck Series race in St. Petersburg. He ensured Franchitti’s participation in the race using his personal contacts.

Working with Arrow McLaren in IndyCar might give Legacy Motor Club the push it needs to recover from its one-off appearance this year.

Legacy Motor Club nearly misses out on Talladega glory

The perks of superspeedway racing are that you never know what might happen. Right when you are about to push forward, another car that has caught up to you from the draft might end up spinning you out and ruin your run completely. That is exactly what happened with LMC driver Erik Jones this Sunday at Talladega.

Jones was comfortably running in third place when he started attacking toward the front, where Carson Hocevar and Chris Buescher were leading the way. Hocevar made an aggressive move while trying to grab the inside line, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. followed him. The sudden movement caused Stenhouse to nick Jones’ bumper.

As Joey Logano says, the NASCARs are like basketball, and just one touch caused Jones to bounce off the track and spiral toward the infield. Fortunately, he managed not to wreck his car. But by that time, he had already lost multiple positions. He finally finished the race in P22, which was definitely not where he would have imagined finishing at the beginning.

If he had succeeded, it would have been his third top-10 finish of the season. His counterpart, John Hunter Nemechek, is still struggling to reach that milestone even once in the 2026 season. With the way things are proceeding in the Chevy camp, LMC’s speed at Talladega is proof that its efforts are in the right direction.