Spencer Boyd Talks New Team and Why Jimmie Johnson Once Flipped Him Off

Spencer Boyd will be driving his sixth full-time season in the NASCAR Truck Series in 2024. However, this year will be dramatically different than years past because the 28-year-old is now co-owner of the team he’ll be driving for, Freedom Racing Enterprises.

The driver, who shocked the NASCAR world when he unexpectedly made a trip to Victory Lane in 2019 with a win at Talladega, said he’s excited about the upcoming campaign because the assembled team has his fingerprints all over it, including hiring two-time Cup Series championship-winning crew chief and former Fox broadcaster Jeff Hammond.

.@SpencerBoyd announces the formation of @FreedomRacing76, which is slated to run a full-time schedule in 2024.

— NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Trucks (@NASCAR_Trucks) January 8, 2024

“We became really good buddies over the last couple of years and started talking about what I was thinking about doing,” Boyd said on the YouTube channel, Beating and Banging. “Hey, I have these partners. We’re talking about doing this. I think GMS is where we need to go get some trucks. So last year we got a couple of trucks. Then, the next thing you know, it turned into, ‘Wow! There’s a lot of trucks available.’

“Jeff had a relationship with Mike Beam (owner of GMS) and, as the cookie crumbled, it was like, ‘OK, hey, you’re kind of going from a mentor and someone who is helping me to I think we need you to be involved. What do you have going on? How busy is your schedule? And is this something that you want to do?

“And he was like, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of it. I think I can bring some value. And then we started kicking ideas around and here we are. Really fortunate to have a guy like him in this. Definitely adds credibility to what we’re doing.”

Spencer Boyd Details Funny Moment With Jimmie Johnson

While Boyd is known for his time in the trucks, he did run a full season of Xfinity Series racing in 2018 and a three-race stint with Rick Ware Racing in the Cup Series a year later. During the fall race at Richmond, the young driver found himself laps down and being a nuisance to now-Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson.

“Funniest moment would be probably getting the finger from Jimmie Johnson at Richmond in a Cup car,” Boyd recalled. “I was just laughing because I knew I was getting lapped. I wasn’t in the greatest car but he was struggling to get around me. I had him on the outside. He was on the outside of me and I just kept driving it down in there, holding my ground, holding my ground.

“And then finally he was like, ‘Dude, what you are doing? Let me go. I’m racing on the lead lap.’ So I thought that was cool. And then I got to mountain bike with him not too long after that and I’m like, ‘You know I was the guy that you gave the –”

“Oh, I know,” Johnson remembered the moment, according to Boyd.

Boyd Reveals Scariest Crash in Career

While Spencer Boyd has had fun on the track, including the memorable race with the seven-time champion, like any NASCAR driver who sticks around long enough, he has had his share of frightening crashes. By his own admission, his scariest came in 2019.

“My wreck at Kentucky was pretty sketchy,” he admitted. “When I cleared myself on Natalie Decker and knocked the front end off of the truck at Kentucky is pretty wild. That was a hard hit. Definitely the hardest.”

In 2022, Boyd suffered another big hit at Las Vegas where he dislocated his shoulder, which later required surgery.

All of that, however, is in the past. He’s focusing forward on 2024 and his new race team. If history is any kind of predictor for the future, bringing Hammond on board to help oversee the operation could result in good things for the No. 76 truck.

Time will tell.

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