The Most Hated Underdog in Racing

By: Derek Pierce

The underdog story is the most popular in all of sports. A guy that starts from the bottom and simply grinds his way to the top. It’s a story that’s impossible to root against. But how long can someone be an underdog? How long until they’re turned on by the very people that have been rooting for them? How long until they are the most hated guy in the sport? For Corey Lajoie, his story changed in just a couple of years.

Corey is the son of Randy Lajoie, a beloved driver that was seen to have never been given a good shot in the Cup Series that he rightfully deserved. Throughout a storied history of being dismissed or leaving teams in the middle of a season and moving between the Cup and Busch series, Randy earned back to back Busch championships. His story is one of grit, never giving up, doing everything he can with the team he was with hoping to get a real opportunity; only when he got that opportunity, it never panned out.

Perhaps in that respect, Corey is too much like his father. Corey’s career has been nothing short of a grind. His NASCAR career began in the K&N Series where he was becoming a proven winner against some major talents like Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Bubba Wallace, and Brett Moffitt. His five wins against this group of drivers in 2012 led to next to nothing the next year. The only thing of note was that he made his Nationwide Series debut for Richard Petty Motorsports at Homestead which ended in a less than stellar 33rd place finish. In fact 2014-2016 were much of the same thing. Taking every chance that came available from the Cup Series down to the Modified Tour and these chances weren’t exactly competitive cars either. They were part time entries that were there to maybe strike gold with a certain driver or at least collect a paycheck for finishing the race.

This ended in 2017 when the 25 year old finally had a ride for almost a full year, in the Cup Series nonetheless. BK Racing took a chance on him and when only looking at the stats, it looks bleak with an average finish of 30th. However, those that know about this team know that 30th place is about where any decent driver would get their cars to be. Lajoie didn’t return to the team in 2018, which was probably for the better as the team shut down that year. Instead he headed to another uncompetitive team in TriStar Motorsports where he earned an average finish of 32nd in 27 starts. This however was the turning point in Lajoie’s career.

Lajoie backed his new status with results. With two top 10’s and increasing the average finish from the previous year, he was proving himself to the fanbase. The next year in 2020, he once again increased their average finish. This, however, wasn’t enough as for the second time in his career, the team would be shutting down, leaving Lajoie without a ride once again. 

Little did many know at the time, this would end up being the biggest break of his career. Spire Motorsports had been running a part time rotation of drivers in 2019 and 2020 but in 2021 they decided to become a two car operation and LaJoie was the standout option to owner Jeff Dickerson. With a five year plan to become a competitive team, both parties were confident in each other to build the organization and make it work. 

Their start couldn’t have gone much better as LaJoie earned a top 10 in his first start with the team, but that was about all the success they achieved that season. Though LaJoie did earn his best average finish of his career that season, it was clear the team was still in the early stages of their growth. 

The next year NASCAR introduced a car that was meant to bring all the cars closer to the same speed, essentially eliminating the “back marker”. The effects of this weren’t apparent right away for the #7 team, but they were able to earn a top 5 and improve their average finish from the previous season. 2023, however, was the year everything started to click for the team. 

At this point they had gotten to the point where they were able to run inside the top 15 and even occasionally compete for top 10’s. Not only did LaJoie earn two top 5’s and three top 10’s, he didn’t have a single DNF the entire season which jumped their average finish all the way up to 20th. However there was one moment this season that marked the turn on LaJoie.

Rather than competing for a win, LaJoie ran around 20th the entire race. Meanwhile his replacement in the #7, some kid by the name of Carson Hocevar who was competing for a truck series championship, drove that car close to the top 10 before a brake failure ended his perfect debut.

Nothing was the same for Corey after this. The team performed poorly in the following weeks and although they returned to form later on in the season with a top 5 and another top 10, it was all too little too late. Everyone had seemingly already turned on him.

In 2024, Spire expanded to three full time cars with Hocevar and Zane Smith joining the team. This year, many went in thinking that if LaJoie is the driver he thinks he is, he’ll be competing for a playoff spot and it has been anything but that. 

The pressure has clearly gotten to LaJoie with him becoming a weekly caution, whether it be wrecking himself or wrecking someone else. All of this happening while he’s being outperformed by his rookie teammates. Eventually, enough was enough as Spire Motorsports not only announced that Lajoie would not be on the team in 2025, but performed an extremely rare mid-season trade with Rick Ware Racing to acquire Justin Haley who was one of the original drivers from 2019-2021. 

Lately, it seems LaJoie has finally figured it out as he’s earned his first two top 10’s on a non-drafting track in the last month, but it’s become a moot point. The fanbase is out on him and the odds of him retaining a ride in the Cup Series are looking dim.

Many question why he was in the cup series in the first place since he has yet to even win in any national touring series. While a fair question, Corey has spent the last 10 years driving for teams that had a hard time imagining a win in a season. Those that deny his ability to build up small teams are crazy, in my opinion. It’s just unfortunate that when he finally earned the chance, it was completely blown by the biggest slump of his career. There’s still time for him to turn it all around, but come Phoenix, that could be all we’ve seen of LaJoie at the top level.