Live Fast Motorsports is the name of the new NASCAR Cup Series team started by B.J. McLeod and Matt Tifft. The team will field #78 Fords in 2021 with McLeod as the driver.
The new team has formed a technical alliance through Stewart-Haas Racing and has already purchased 12 cars from SHR. Live Fast also will utilize a charter from Go FAS Racing.
“It’s literally decades of dreaming, decades of work, decades of being focused, just a lot of relationships being built to get us to this point,” McLeod. “You can’t sum it up in one or two or three words, even. I guess the biggest thing to say is just really looking forward to continuing to work the way that I have the last couple of decades to get to where I’m at now and see what we can make with this deal together. Matt is gonna make me stronger. He’s got some really good qualities about him that I’m excited about helping some of the weaknesses that I might have and just what we can do together. I just can’t wait to get going.”
McLeod, as a driver, has contested races in all three of NASCAR’s national series since 2010, and most recently, has competed in the Cup and NASCAR Xfinity series as an owner/driver. In 57-career starts as a Cup driver, he has a best race finish of 19th in the 2019 Daytona 500 with Rick Ware Racing. He contested 16 Cup races and 31 Xfinity Series races in 2020.
Tifft is a former NASCAR driver but was forced into retirement by medical issues late in his rookie Cup Series season in 2019.
“I explored all kinds of avenues, whether that was being involved from a PR standpoint or sponsor standpoint,” Tifft said. “I looked at some driver coaching stuff. I couldn’t drive, so when you spend your entire life being a driver, it’s pretty hard. When you’re 23 years old, you’re not thinking in your head, ‘Okay, this is it. I’m gonna retire after this year.’ But the situation was thrown in there to where I’m not cleared to drive. I couldn’t drive, so I went through several months in there, one, I was dealing with the health problems but, two, kind of a dark space of I’ve worked my entire life to get here, and all of a sudden, it’s gone. So I really worried about it, because I wanted to be a part of NASCAR. NASCAR is my work life, and I love everything about racing, so my full investment in this sport is seeing the sport grow, seeing our team grow, and to have that opportunity as a team owner is so rewarding. I mean, this is as big of a deal to me, if not bigger, than being a driver in the Cup Series.”
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