11 minute read
A Truck Series Team on the Rise
SSince 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
• 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
go in the right direction, but at least we are going in a direction and just trying to get better. I think that’s the biggest thing is just the constant innovation and making improvements and not just sitting still, you know?”
Hensley is hardly alone in his effusive praise for the organization, which captured its first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship in 2016 with veteran Johnny Sauter and returned to the Promised Land a season ago with Creed – a 23-year-old in just his second season of full-time Truck Series competition.
“When I first came over, I had a lot to learn from ARCA,” said Creed, who earned five wins on the way to his 2020 title after going winless as a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series rookie. “I was fast, but I just made a lot of mistakes and didn’t race very well. And so it kind of took a while to get that figured out. I feel like the truck drove really good the first year I was here, but I didn’t have the speed that most racers did.
“The guys did a really good job last year on changing that. The trucks were a little harder to drive but faster. The guys did a great job on working in the shop and making my truck better, and that’s really hard to do.”
One of the keys to Creed’s success – and the organization as a whole over the years – has been what basically amounts to an openbook policy among its teams.
“Everyone knows what everyone’s running,” Creed said. “So, I have the option to go run exactly what they run or he has the option to run what I run in my truck. So, I think we all drive a little bit kind of alike but a little bit different.”
Since being named president of GMS Racing in December 2014, Beam has made collaboration and teamwork a focal point among the drivers and teams competing under the GMS umbrella. For example, instead of having just one weekly competition meeting among the different teams as is typical of most organizations, GMS has no fewer than two.
“There’s a lot of communication,” Beam said. “Everybody knows exactly what the other people’s setups are. Everybody knows exactly what the plan is from race stages to pitting, and it usually goes pretty well. Here at GMS, the crew chiefs and engineers are all in the same room so they really communicate well. That’s been a huge part of our success. Everybody communicates.”
If anyone within the organization ever seems to be the least bit at odds with someone else, that fire is quickly put out.
“I’m not going to put up with it,” said Beam, who worked as a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief for the better part of 22 years. “I’ve been in enough places where there’s been a lot of tension between teams and stuff, and we’re just not going to do that because it’s just wasted energy. Everybody has the same amount of shocks, springs, trucks. Everybody has really good pit crews, everybody has everything they need. They don’t need to worry about what they don’t have; they just need to worry about how they execute, and that’s the way I pretty much just lay it out.”
Hensley, the crew chief on the No. 23 truck of Purdy, appreciates the transparency and sharing that is so embedded within the company’s culture.
“That wasn’t always the case at the places where I’ve worked before,” Hensley said. “Not mentioning any names but just stating facts. But it’s an open book here at GMS, and if one team gets it, all five teams get it. It’s not like there’s certain things available to a particular team; it’s across the board. And I think it may not work for every team, but at least it’s there for us to take advantage of, and we can learn what to do and sometimes we learn what not to do. “That’s the biggest thing: just the open communication here. We have production meetings and competition meetings and post-race meetings where there’s nothing left to the imagination. It’s all up front and shared amongst the teams.” The driving force behind the data sharing is that there’s strength in numbers – and with four full-time teams to glean from, GMS Racing has more resources than most truck organizations. “I mean, (four) heads are better than one,” Hensley said. “I’ve always said, ‘That’s what makes the difference of being successful and being average,’ and I think that’s why Mike Beam stresses that here and actually won’t take anything less. And that’s, to me, what makes the biggest single difference is the fact that we all work together really good from top to bottom.” As for the guy at the top, the steady leadership of Gallagher can’t be forgotten.
“He’s there to encourage us when things are not going good, he’s there to pat you on the back when they are, but he’s never there to do your job,” Hensley said. “He’s a very hands-off owner, but you know that he’s there watching the whole time. He’s a pleasure to work for. He’ll call you up when you do good and call you up when things went bad and tell you to keep your head up and keep digging and everything’s going to be OK.
“It’s huge to know that you have got someone supporting you like that in the background. And knowing that he understands how hard this is and how hard it is to win at this level and that he appreciates it when you do, that means a lot.”
GMS RACING PROFILE KEY GMS PERSONNEL
The greatness of GMS Racing lies first and foremost in its people. Here’s more on three of them – plus a note on the organization’s biggest milestone to date.
–JARED TURNER
TEAM OWNER MAURY GALLAGHER “IT GOES BACK TO MR. GALLAGHER’S FINANCIAL
commitment to build GMS,” company president Mike Beam said of his boss, who is the team’s founder. “We’ve made some good decisions on drivers and crew chiefs and stuff, but it boils down to people and GMS giving us all the tools to work with, and Mr. Gallagher giving us all the tools to work with. An owner like Maury Gallagher lets you do your job. He enjoys racing and he supports me and this whole company, so he is just a great owner and just lets us do our job. He’s there to help if we need anything.”
TEAM PRESIDENT MIKE BEAM AS PRESIDENT OF GMS RACING, BEAM IS
responsible for the day-to-day oversight of all four teams and making sure everyone is communicating and on the same page. Beam works diligently to ensure the different GMS Racing drivers and teams share in each other’s successes and keep an open notebook with each other so no one gets left behind and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
“There is no ‘A Team’ or ‘B Team,’” Beam said. “They’re all the same. I don’t care who wins; just one of those knuckleheads needs to win, but I don’t care which one. They have a lot of respect for each other.”
JOSH WISE
A FORMER NASCAR CUP SERIES DRIVER,
Wise plays a key role in helping the young drivers of GMS Racing reach their full potential.
“He works out with them,” Beam said. “Basically, he just teaches them fundamentals about racing – psychologically and just how to communicate with your crew chief and your engineer. Josh was a really good driver when he drove. His best story is just that he didn’t capitalize on the opportunity, and he makes sure these young guys do not miss out on the opportunity of driving really good equipment and being associated with Chevrolet and General Motors, and basically he’s just making them grow up and mature pretty quick.”
Biggest Milestone
WHILE WINNING MORE THAN 35 NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK
Series races as an organization is no small feat, claiming two championships in only seven years as a full-time truck organization has arguably been an even more notable accomplishment for GMS Racing.
Has Beam been surprised by how quickly the organization found success?
“I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I don’t want to say it’s surprised me,” the team president said. “We’ve been really blessed and we’ve had things go our way. I look at the races that we lost that we should have won, and, of course, that’s what you do.”
GMS RACING PROFILE THE GMS DRIVERS
With four drivers in its NASCAR Camping World Truck Series stable, GMS Racing has a full house. Get to know Sheldon Creed, Zane Smith, Tyler Ankrum and Chase Purdy.
–JARED TURNER
SHELDON CREED
THE REIGNING NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES
champion, Creed is seeking to become just the second driver in series history to earn back-to-back championships.
“Sheldon has always been fast,” GMS Racing president Mike Beam said. “He reminds me of a Cale Yarborough. It’s like, ‘How do you crank this thing? I’ll take care of the rest of it.’ He’s just on the gas.”
ZANE SMITH
COMING OFF A SPECTACULAR ROOKIE SEASON IN 2020 WHEN HE
won two races and finished second in the standings behind teammate Sheldon Creed, Smith is widely considered an up-and-comer in not only the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series but the sport in general. For the second year at GMS, he is paired with former NASCAR Cup Series crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion.
TYLER ANKRUM
THE 2018 CHAMPION
of what is now the ARCA Menards Series East, Ankrum parlayed his ARCA success into a full-time NASCAR Camping World Series ride with team owner David Gilliland’s team the following year and moved to GMS Racing in 2020. The 20-year-old native of San Bernardino, California, finished ninth in points despite going winless in Year One as part of the GMS stable.
CHASE PURDY
AFTER RUNNING A
limited NASCAR Camping World Truck Series schedule in 2018, taking a break in 2019 and returning in a part-time role in 2020, Purdy made the jump to full-time status this year alongside veteran crew chief Jeff Hensley. Although the first several races of 2021 were a struggle, Purdy – a 21-year-old native of Meridian, Mississippi – appears to have a very bright future in the sport.
