Noah Gragson will return to the No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford for the 2027 NASCAR Cup Series season with options to extend beyond next year, the team announced Friday.
Gragson is in the midst of his third full season in the Cup Series and second with Front Row Motorsports. The Las Vegas native sits 31st in the standings.
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The 28-year-old driver said after Friday’s Cup Series qualifying session at Richmond Raceway that there were “a lot of moving pieces” involved in the timing of the deal — for himself, the team and his manufacturer — but that he was pleased with reaching an agreement before the regular season was out. Though the extension was not a long-term one, Gragson said he has time to earn his keep with FRM the rest of the way.
“I feel like just the opportunity to keep on pushing and be the best version of myself, both as a person and a race car driver, is key, and if I feel like I can be at my best and we can be at our best as a team, I think the sky’s the limit,” Gragson said. “Ultimately, at the same time, it’s one of those things where, yeah, you get in the same Silly Season situation next year. It’d be nice to say, ‘oh yeah, I’ve got 10 years to keep going racing,’ but you know it’s a cutthroat industry, and everyone’s competing for a job at the end of the day. If I feel like I can be at my best and have everything around me at its best, I think we can do great things.”
Gragson is a 13-time winner in the NASCAR O‘Reilly Auto Parts Series, where he competed from 2019 through 2022 at JR Motorsports, collecting a career-best eight wins in 2022 before finishing runner-up in the championship.
The 2026 campaign has been a difficult one for Gragson, 28, and first-year Cup crew chief Grant Hutchens. Gragson‘s best finish (ninth place) came in April at Talladega Superspeedway for his lone top 10 this season. Other runs have been encouraging, including an 11th-place showing at the Daytona 500 and a 16th-place effort in May at Nashville Superspeedway.
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“I feel like we’ve kind of been turning a page, and I’ve been seeing a little bit of uptick in our performance, which is good,” Gragson said, “and working with first-year crew chief Grant, learning each other, it takes time, and I’m starting to see that page kind of turn in a sense of, hey, we’re going back to race tracks for the second time now. We know each other a little bit better now. I’m starting to see that progression these last couple weeks, and we’ve been working really hard behind the scenes to improve that team chemistry, that dynamic, the communication. This sport’s all about people and having the right people around you, and I feel like I’ve got a great group around me. It’s just we’re trying to find what’s the right direction we need to go in, and what will allow us to reach our full potential.”
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Gragson made his Cup debut in 2022 on a part-time schedule, splitting time between Beard Motorsports‘ No. 62 entry, Kaulig Racing‘s No. 16 car and then Hendrick Motorsports‘ No. 48 car after an injury to Alex Bowman. The 2023 season marked Gragson’s first full-time Cup campaign after taking over the No. 42 Chevrolet for Legacy Motor Club. He joined Stewart-Haas Racing for the 2024 season, completing his first full Cup campaign with a career-best seven top-10 finishes and landing 24th in points with a personal-best 19.6 average finish.
His average finish through 23 races this season is 24.65, which would mark his best average finish since the 2024 campaign if maintained.
Gragson is set to start 35th in the 37-car field in Saturday night’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond (7 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Contributing: Zack Albert at Richmond Raceway