GMS RACING PROFILE
THE TRUCK SERIES TEAM THAT
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Since going NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Racing in 2014 with only 20 employees and one full-time team, GMS Racing has expanded to now consist of four full-time teams and 95 employees. Along the way, the organization owned by Allegiant Air CEO Maury Gallagher has hired veteran NASCAR Cup Series crew chief Mike Beam as its president and moved its headquarters from Charlotte to Statesville, North Carolina. None of the four drivers who currently compete for GMS Racing – Sheldon Creed, Zane Smith, Tyler Ankrum, and Chase Purdy – were with the team back in its earliest days, nor had any of them even graduated high school. The one thing that really hasn’t changed for GMS Racing since the beginning? Its consistent success. With two driver championships and more than 35 wins in less than eight full years of NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
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POLE POSITION 2021
•• The GMS Racing Lineup (left to right): Chase Purdy, Zane Smith, Sheldon Creed, Tyler Ankrum competition, the organization has flourished in ways that no one could have imagined. Perhaps most remarkably, it’s happened not with one driver or two drivers or three drivers but rather with a lengthy driver roster that has included both veterans and youngsters alike. Bottom line? Almost everyone who has the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a GMS Racing truck lives to be thankful for the day they signed up. “The biggest thing I see here is just the organization as a whole and how it’s ran,” said veteran crew chief Jeff Hensley, who joined GMS in 2016 and as of press time had won five races while calling the shots for a GMS driver. “I mean, it’s like a Cup-style organization that happens to run trucks as far as preparation, the engineering that goes into it, the scheduling, how we try to stay on top of innovating new things, getting better. “We don’t rest on our laurels. We don’t always PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES
