NASCAR: Front Row announces its adding a 3rd car for 2025 a day after Stewart-Haas says it’s shutting down

Front Row Motorsports is re-adding a third car for 2025.

The team announced Wednesday that it had purchased a third charter to expand to three cars next season. While the team’s statement didn’t say where the charter came from, it’s a near guarantee the charter is one of the four Stewart-Haas Racing is selling. Stewart-Haas announced Tuesday that it was shutting down at the end of the 2024 season and FRM had been mentioned as a buyer for one of the charters.

Front Row currently fields two cars in the Cup Series for Michael McDowell and Todd Gilliland. McDowell has already announced that he’s heading to Spire Motorsports in 2025. That would leave Front Row with two vacancies ahead of next season if Gilliland returns to the team.

Gilliland is currently 22nd in the Cup Series points standings and three points ahead of McDowell in 23rd.

Front Row has slowly improved over the past few seasons after making its first Cup Series start in 2005. A Front Row driver had never finished in the top 25 of the points standings until Chris Buescher won a shortened race at Pocono in 2016 and made the playoffs. Since then, McDowell has won two races including the 2021 Daytona 500 and the team’s drivers have finished in the top 25 five different times.

The team had three full-time cars in 2019 but scaled back to two full-time efforts in 2020. With Stewart-Haas four drivers needing rides for the 2025 season, the team will have no shortage of options over the coming months.