Las Vegan Noah Gragson handles 'smooth' transition to new Cup Series team

Alex Wright, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Mar 14, 2025

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LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas native Noah Gragson is driving for his third team in his third season in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Gragson is in his first season racing for Front Row Motorsports. His car number and race shop are different, but not everything is entirely new for Gragson.

After Stewart-Hass Racing shut down after the 2024 season, Gragson transitioned to his new home at Front Row Motorsports and brought many of his crew members with him.

“It’s been really smooth for me on my part and all the guys on the team; probably half of them worked with me last year at Stewart-Haas Racing,” Gragson said. “For myself, it’s been a pretty seamless transition, super easy and comfortable just learning some of the new members of the organization at Front Row Motorsports.”

Gragson will race in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The green flag is scheduled for 12:30 p.m.

The most noticeable similarity for Gragson is he was able to bring over crew chief Drew Blickensderfer to lead the No. 4 Ford. In his second full season driving in the Cup Series, Gragson said having an established relationship with his crew chief is beneficial to acclimating to a new team.

Blickensderfer is “certainly a guy that I’m comfortable with and familiar with, so it makes that really easy to be able to talk to him and work with him,” Gragson said. “We already have our communication in line and have spent a year working with each other and growing together.”

Gragson joined the Cup Series in 2023, but his season for Legacy Motor Club was cut short when he was suspended in August for “liking” an insensitive meme on social media and didn’t race the rest of the season.

After being reinstated, he joined Stewart-Haas Racing, but the team announced last May it would be shutting down. Any worries about finding a ride for 2025 were put to rest when Front Row Motorsports and Gragson announced in July he would join the organization.

Gragson finished 24th in the point standings and finished with seven top-10 finishes last season. He recorded a then career-best sixth-place finish in last year’s Pennzoil 400.

The biggest lesson Gragson said he learned was to not let one bad race weekend roll over into more races.

“I kind of ride the waves of when things are good, they’re good,” said Gragson, 31st in the Cup Series standings after four races. “When things are not so good, it kind of carries into the next couple of weeks on the racetrack. Just trying to get out of those slumps and continue to bring fast race cars to the track and maximize the race weekend.”

Gragson, 26, is part of a young lineup at Front Row Motorsports. The organization has become more competitive in the past few seasons and expanded to three cars this offseason. Gragson has two of his “buddies” as his teammates in Todd Gilliland and Zane Smith.

Gragson’s relationship with Smith goes back to their youth, when they raced at the Bullring alongside Las Vegas native Riley Herbst, in his first season in the Cup Series with 23XI Racing.

Smith and Herbst had several years of racing experience when Gragson started racing at age 13. The three were teammates and raced at the three-eighths-mile Bullring on the LVMS property.

“We all support each other and want to see each other be successful on the racetrack,” Gragson said. “No doubt we want to beat each other, but at the end of the day, it’s great to see guys that you’ve grown up with and that you’re best friends with going to the racetrack every weekend and getting to support them and race against them side by side.”