Illicit Affairs

Chapter 41

It's been two months since Ryan made his decision to join Legacy and we have hit the ground running. I honestly have never been happier in my life. I love working with Jimmie. Our relationship and bond has grown stronger and stronger every day. Building a team from the ground up is hard work. Long, exhausting days but it's so fulfilling. I basically have free reign to make all of these big decisions and I am completely in my element.

Splitting up all the duties, Jimmie took charge of all personnel: interviewing new hires, repositioning everyone from SHR who chose to stay and reaching out to everyone who had shown an interest in joining our team. Meanwhile, I handled all of the business aspects: drawing up contracts, lining up sponsorships and mountains of paperwork, cutting through red tape and zoom calls and emails out the wazoo.

The day after Ryan made his decision, he had a sit down with Roger Penske. He expressed his gratitude to him for taking a chance on an eighteen year old kid over a decade ago but as difficult as it was he had simply received an offer he would have been a fool to refuse. After disclosing some of the terms, even Mr. Penske had to agree. They were parting on good terms, which left the door open for a potential alliance. Even better, Ryan was able to convince his crew chief and spotter to join him.

Jimmie had thought that Rodney would be a good fit as Chase's crew chief, but Rodney expressed his desire to get off of the pit box. Jimmie felt that with Rodney's extensive knowledge, leadership abilities and years of experience, that he would be a perfect fit for competition director. A move that Rodney eagerly accepted.

That left us needing to find a crew chief for Chase since the remaining SHR crew chiefs had elected to go with their respective drivers who had already found new homes for next season.

Jimmie then pulled the ultimate fuck you move on Hendrick by hiring Cliff Daniels...Kyle Larson's crew chief.  As I praised Jimmie for pulling off that move, he humbly explained that he couldn't take all of the credit because it was Cliff that had initially approached him. Jimmie and Cliff had a good history, having worked together during Jimmie's final season. Cliff also spoke of his displeasure over how Jeff was running the team, in addition to the paternity scandal that my grandfather was still hiding from. It was an easy sell to Cliff, who admitted that he'd always wanted to work with Chase.

Jimmie also hired former SHR driver and future hall of famer Kevin Harvick, who had retired last year, to be Legacy's vice chairman, and as a suggestion from me, Erin was hired on as our social media director.

As for sponsors, Napa and Unifirst made the decision to leave HMS and stick with their driver which gave Chase full season sponsorship, thus making that part of my job so much easier. As expected, Ford practically busted a nut when they were informed that Chase Elliott...most popular driver....had joined the Ford camp.

Ryan was a little trickier sponsor wise as the majority of his partners were tied to Penske... Except Body Armor. They had a personal partnership with Ryan. In the past, they had only sponsored the car for a handful of events. I was able to talk them into twenty six races as well as the all star race.  Weeks later I got Wrangler on board for six races and as of a few minutes ago, I filled the last remaining piece of the sponsorship puzzle by finding someone that was somewhat outside of the box to step in for the remaining races, including the clash.

The timing could not have been better because tomorrow is the day we make our official announcement. When SHR announced they were shutting down at the end of the season, many speculated that we had bought SHR. An assumption we neither confirmed nor denied.

Many also assumed that we hired two SHR drivers...namely Noah Gragson and Chase Briscoe. Only we were aware that Gragson and Briscoe, along with the remaining two drivers, had already signed with other teams. I could not wait to see the reactions when we announced Ryan and Chase. It was all hush hush as Penske and HMS had agreed not to reveal that they would not be returning next season. The only downside is that we will not be able to have any paint scheme reveals for our announcement since it's still fairly early in the season and our teams are all still working for someone else. Not really that big of a deal.