Corey Lajoie starting to entertain life after racing NASCAR

Corey Lajoie says he is starting to consider what life after active competition in NASCAR looks like for him.

The comments were made on Tuesday in the latest episode of the Stacking Pennies podcast he co-hosts with pit crew veteran Ryan Flores.

Lajoie, the son of two-time Busch Series champion Randy, has pursued his own racing career for much of the past decade-plus and raced in the Cup Series from 2017-to-2024. His full-time tenure came to a close after last season when Spire Motorsports released him from his contract a year before it expired.

That is also how he came to drive in the Truck Series for Spire this fall, just because he is still under contract for the organization. In addition to that schedule, he has made four Cup Series starts for Rick Ware Racing and co-hosted Cup Series pre- and post-race shows for Amazon Prime Sports.

So what about next year?

“I like doing TV,” Lajoie said. “I think I’m going to start up this carbon fiber business, and if NASCAR wants to keep doing the show, I’ll keep doing the show because I like doing it and having the platform to talk about life and racing.

“But yeah, Trucks aren’t particularly fun to drive, and also like smashing my head up against the wall, metaphorically. Like, you’re fighting a battle that is just; if you’re not doing it yourself, you deal with all the bullshit. We can’t do a new body build. Well, we can’t build it this way because GM this, and simulation that.”

“So, if I had a really good opportunity call, then sure, I’ll entertain the conversation, but there’s like 10 other things that I could be doing right now to start what the next chapter looks like, and I think I’m going to start focusing on that.”

With all of that said, he does still want to race in the Daytona 500 next year, given the opportunity that comes with simply taking the green flag in The Great American Race.

“I’ll entertain Daytona 500 offers because I think I can compete for a win in a decent car there, and [I] made the race the hard way a couple of times,” LaJoie said. “So, I think I bring some value to a team, and you could also make about a year’s worth of pay in one week. So, I’ll look at that, but yeah, like Truck Series offers, I’m not entertaining.”

Lajoie has made clear at various points this year that he simply wants to make it in the Cup Series, and if it’s not there, he is hard-pressed to see the value in doing it at this stage of his career.

And he isn’t getting called.

“There’s really not any [opportunities] because — it is just what it is, right? You get out of them, you lose your seat. The music stops, and they plus somebody else that’s cheaper and comparable, that can do the same job.”