By Eric Johnson
HARRISBURG, N.C. — After all was said and done, Ricky Stenhouse and the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet placed 30th in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series.
Along the way, Stenhouse, age 38, strung together three top-10 finishes and was consistently a top-15 finisher. Coming out of Olive Branch, Mississippi, Stenhouse, the 2023 Daytona 500 champion, is entering his 14th NASCAR Cup season and is looking for an improved campaign. Fully centered on the rapidly approaching Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium this weekend, as well as the Daytona 500 a fortnight later, Stenhouse hopes and plans to be in the mix at both 0.25-mile Bowman Gray as well as on the frantically fast Daytona International Speedway 2.5-mile tri-oval.
Stenhouse took a break from, literally, getting his house in order for the first two races of 2026, as well as the marathon of a 36-races schedule, to catch up with Racer. Take it away Ricky Stenhouse.
“Right now, I’m driving our motorhome back over to our shop,” explained Stenhouse of just what he is up to this week as he looks to Bowman Gray Stadium. “We had a little ice and snow storm here and they were talking about the power going out. I knew we needed to stock our motorhome up for Daytona. I knew we needed to put our clothes and food on there, so I just stocked it up We’re good to go.”
Stenhouse talked about what he’s been up to this offseason.
“I actually too this offseason and didn’t do anything,” said Stenhouse. “In November and December, I literally just hung out with the family. And I enjoyed it. It was nice. I knew my January was going to be super busy and then racing obviously starts this weekend. My January has been slammed.
“Tomorrow I’m ready to go to the Pentagon to get a tour from Pete Hegseth (American government official). That is super cool. You know, I took in some Supercross in San Diego and went to PBR (Professional Bull Riders) with all the NOS crew in New York City. So it’s been a good January. I enjoyed not doing a whole lot except working out and getting ready for the season.”
The NASCAR Cook Out Clash is this weekend.
“Yes sir, I will be on track a Bowman Gray on Saturday,” Stenhouse said. “It’s not really a make or break thing, you know? It’s not super serious. I mean we want to do well for our partners and run well and make the race, but at the same time, we don’t have a ton of new Chevrolet body parts.
“So trying to make sure you get out of there with maybe some body panels that you can reuse would be beneficial for a team like us because we are a single car team. It will be interesting to just kind of see how that race plays out. It’ll be really, really cold. I think it’s supposed to be a temperature high of 30 degrees. Yeah, it’s going to be a chilly one.”
Shortly after the Bowman Gray race, Stenhouse will look to the Daytona 500 and everything that comes along with it.
“We’re ready. We’re ready for it. We’ve been watching some tape and some film and we know that over the last five years we’ve put ourselves in the right positions to win the race. Obviously, we’ve only won it once, but we continue to put ourselves in the right spots and we’ll be able to win us another one,” he explained. “Pumped to get back going. You know it’s a long week down there. I’m running the Truck race. It’ll be my first Truck race. So that will fill up the weekend even more with racing that on Friday night. Man, it’s going to be really cool to race the Truck and to try and get us a win there, as well.”
Crew chief Mike Kelley and the entire underdog Hyak Motorsports race team will be there to push Stenhouse and the No. 47 Chevrolet to post maximum results.
“We’ll give it everything we’ve got,” said Stenhouse. “I feel like we show up to the race track and we don’t feel like we’re an underdog. We don’t have that mentality, you know? We’ve got the mentality of we’ve got really good quality people. We’ve got good quality cars. Our ownership group doesn’t hesitate to get us stuff that we need. Yeah, we’re definitely an underdog when it comes to resources and things like that that other teams have that we don’t. We just try and focus on what we do have and try and make what we have.
“We want to do the best we can with it all. I’m just pumped to get the season going. The guys have been working really hard this off season just getting things more organized. We had that test in January. We normally dot get many tests, so I think that was a big benefit. Hopefully it will help us throughout the year because I think we learned a lot there.”
Stenhouse comes off something of an underwhelming 2025 season.
“2025 definitely wasn’t anything to write home about, but at the same time I felt like it was useful. Again, I think we learned a lot of what not to do,” he said. “Through the summer months we were working on our car and were just headed in the wrong direction on things that we were working on. That kind of led us down a path for a couple months where we just couldn’t get out of our way. I think the bright minds we have at the shop put their heads together and kind of found what we needed and we were able to right the ship and end the season strong.
“I’m happy with the way we ended. I feel like or execution was something we looked at and said, ‘Man, if we can match or execution this year with a little bit more raw speed and handling out of or race car, than we’re going to have a good 2026.’ I think that’s where our focus is. We want to be continuing to prepare and execute the way we did. We just want to bring a little bit more raw speed to the race track.”
What are the goals for the new season?
“Early on last year up to around race 12, we were in the NASCAR Playoffs. We had what we needed points-wise to be in the playoffs,” Stenhouse explained. “We want to kind of capture that again. If you do the season in thirds, in that first third we just want to make sure we are still in contention for top 16 in points. With the new Chase format, you’re going to have be top 16 in points. We’ll take that third and then we’ll do the next third and make sure we are still in that same position. I feel ready to go I feel like I’m well rested.
“I feel like I’ve done a really good job of kind of resetting everything this offseason. I feel like my team has done the same thing. Again, I think one race at a time, but I’ve got this gut feeling that I feel more confident going into 2026 than I did last year. I’m ready to hit the track running.”
