On Thursday, Riley Herbst announced that he was leaving Joe Gibbs Racing to pursue new opportunities at Stewart-Haas Racing. The 21-year old just completed his rookie season in the Xfinity Series with four top-five and seventeen top-ten finishes. His average finish was sixteenth, the second-lowest finish for Joe Gibbs Racing in a season since Brian Scott in 2012 (18.2). Herbst shared a message on Twitter about his decision to leave Joe Gibbs Racing.
pic.twitter.com/yykHavgAI4 — Riley Herbst (@rileyherbst) November 12, 2020
Besides competing in the Xfinity Series, Herbst also competed in four races in the ARCA Menards Series for Joe Gibbs Racing, winning at Michigan along with three top-five and four top-ten finishes.
Herbst will take over the No. 98 Ford Mustang, replacing Chase Briscoe, who will move up to the Cup Series next year, replacing Clint Bowyer. Herbst has some big shoes to fill. Briscoe won nine races this year and finished fourth in the championship standings.
Back on October 20th, Tony Stewart told the media he was going to continue the Xfinity Series saying, “We’ve got a couple prospects that nothing is done yet to announce, but we’ll keep working on our end. We definitely plan to continue the Xfinity program. We obviously see the value in it as you see with the [Briscoe announcement], so we plan to continue down that path.”
Herbst and Xfinity Series champion Austin Cindric will be the only two full-time drivers competing for Ford. His first race for Stewart-Haas will be on February 13th at Daytona.
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