Corey LaJoie reflects on improvement from last season to now

Perhaps no driver in NASCAR has improved more from 2022 to 2023 than Corey LaJoie has.

The Spire Motorsports wheelman is in the middle of the playoff race, and has competed for wins on multiple occasions in 2023. For a team like Spire, that seemed out of the question over the last couple of seasons, but LaJoie has made it a reality.

One of the reasons LaJoie has struggled over recent season has been how often he accumulated DNFs over the years. However, he doesn’t even have one in 2023, and he pointed that out when asked how the No. 7 Spire team has improved so much.

“By finishing races,” explained LaJoie. “We only completed 83 percent of the laps last year, and you cannot get points If you don’t finish races. We had a lot of mechanical mistakes take us out of contention. We also had a couple driver’s mistakes as well that resulted in DNFs.

“Cleaning those up was certainly the No. 1 of our priority list. And we’ve done that so far halfway through the year.”

Nevertheless, LaJoie is far from surprised by his own performance, as well as his team’s in 2023. The Spire Motorsports driver believes his team is right where they should be, and the sky is the limit moving forward.

“It’s right where we thought we should be,” a confident LaJoie stated. “When we execute the day, our floor is generally in the top-20. If you continue to do that, then you start running in the top-15 more consistently and that’s the way the progression goes. …. [Competition director and crew chief] Ryan Sparks and I and all the people knew what we were capable of when we executed and what we were able to do when the competence is there for me driving the car putting it on the edge. And then him also just having confidence in me and my feedback and continuing to grow that notebook. 

“It might surprise some people who don’t really know what we were capable of — whether it’s myself as a driver, or my team behind me building good race cars — but it’s no surprise to everybody within these doors.”

It remains to be seen if LaJoie can get into the playoffs, but he’ll have some interesting race tracks to attempt to do it at in Atlanta Motor Speedway and Daytona, the final race before the cutoff.

Regardless, Corey LaJoie and Spire can take solace in how much they’ve improved in 2023, whether they make the playoff or not come time.