Connor Hall will drive the Nelson Motorsports No. 22 next season.
Just a month removed from winning the NASCAR Weekly Series national championship, Hall has come to an agreement with team owner Barry Nelson to chase a CARS Tour championship while also entering the biggest Late Model Stock races of the season.
Nelson has won three CARS Tour championships, all with Bobby McCarty, in 2018, 2019 and 2021 before the driver left for R&S Race Cars at the start of this season. Nelson started this season with veteran Cale Gale but they parted ways in May with Hickory Motor Speedway champion Landon Huffman driving the car in the interim.
They finished second in the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 last month but Huffman says he was notified this week that the No. 22 car would go in a different direction.
“This came as a shock and I am disappointed in the result, however I am very thankful for the opportunity to compete in the CARS Tour and NASCAR regional ranks at a high level,” Huffman said in a statement. “I am proud of the progress we have made as a team in 2023 and was looking forward to building off our success in 2024.”
At the same time, Hall notified Chad Bryant Racing that he was joining Nelson Motorsports, not wanting to blindside a team owner that he has called a close friend and mentor that played an instrumental role in molding Hall into a champion.
Hall says Nelson initiated the conversation, as this is something he would have never thought plausible before this month. Their only other previous interactions beyond being friendly at the race track was Hall nearly selling Nelson a yacht over the past year.
Nelson told Short Track Scene the Sunday night after the Martinsville race concluded that he hoped to retain Huffman but conceded that funding would be a consideration.
“It’s sometimes about money but Landon is doing his job, I’ve been working on funding,” Nelson said. “I’ve been waiting on the schedule so I could help the sponsors. I’ve been fussing at CARS Tour this week about getting us a schedule so I can talk to prospective people. It takes a lot of money to run this thing the way I want to run it. Good equipment takes money.”
Nelson said he wanted to have two full-time cars next year.
“If I can get everything handled, I want to get the 12 out of mothballs and run two cars,” Nelson said. “I have big ambitions. I’ve always ran two cars, but I don’t want to do it until everything can be done right.
“I don’t want to give the second driver any less than the first driver. That’s the ways I’ve always done it.”
Huffman does have a degree of funding for his personal car that runs weekly at Hickory through High Rock Vodka but Nelson has long avoided having alcohol and liquor partnerships on his cars. It’s also not enough to fund a full-time CARS Tour and Virginia Triple Crown season without additional support and that’s why the Nelson Motorsports No. 12 was not a viable option.
He hopes to continue racing CARS Tour next season but is aiming to do it in-house instead.
When McCarty left, he also took veteran racer and general manager Timothy Peters with him alongside crew chief David Triplett, leaving Nelson Motorsports without any notebooks. That is part and parcel of why Gale struggled at the start of the season but it’s also a testament to the work crew chief Matthew Eshleman and Huffman have done together.
Nelson credited both of them for getting the No. 22 back to a contending level.
“It’s been a process all the way through,” Nelson said after Martinsville. “The thing about what we’ve done is we’ve progressed one step at a time without never falling back. We keep waiting for that fall back moment but we’ve continued to progress.”
That process has included Huffman but will continue next season with Hall.
