Jeb Burton spent the last three seasons maximizing speed with Jordan Anderson Racing Bommarito Autosport, fighting an uphill battle. For the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season, Burton’s wish for an alliance with a NASCAR Cup Series program was fulfilled, with the team forming a partnership with Richard Childress Racing.
When Kaulig Racing departed the series to be the lead team for Ram in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2026, an opening needed to be filled within the Chevrolet banner. Jordan Anderson Racing covered it, beefing up its ties with RCR. Burton was the prime beneficiary, hovering near the postseason bubble in prior seasons, aside from winning his way into the postseason in 2023.
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The alliance, which is enhancing JAR’s efforts, has brought challenges. In some ways, they were starting from scratch while also adding a third full-time entry.
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“Anything that you change, there are going to be growing pains,” Burton said of the alliance. “The first part of the year, we had to dissect, ‘This would work for us, this wouldn’t.’ At some races, we struggled badly. We didn’t look at everything that we knew, and I don’t feel like we did a good job for four races. I feel like now we understand the alliance better and the tools more. We have more speed this year than the [four] years that I’ve been here, but we don’t have the results to show for it.”
“It’s been a lot of work and navigate through,” Anderson told NASCAR.com. “We would like to be running a little better, but it’s one thing we’re navigating through, what we need to do better, collectively, to be better at that. When Kaulig moved on to the Truck Series, that became available, and there was a block to get that in years past. That opened the door for us to get in. It was the next logical step.”
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An adjustment process was expected. The No. 27 team also underwent a leadership change, with J.C. Umscheid stepping into the crew chief role after spending several seasons at Tricon Garage, where he worked as a truck chief in the Truck Series.
The pace was evident early for the No. 27 team. Burton logged time inside the top 10 at Phoenix Raceway en route to his lone top-10 finish of 2026 through 16 races.
However, those four floundering weeks spanned consecutively in the second month of the 2026 campaign. Between Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Rockingham Speedway, Burton dropped a handful of positions in the driver standings to 17th. Promise was shown the next week at Kansas Speedway with a 13th-place effort after a 30th-place car in the series’ previous race at Kansas last fall.
Jeb Burton drives the No. 27 Jordan Anderson Racing Chevrolet during a NASCAR O
Since then, though, Burton has six consecutive finishes of 22nd or worse, dipping to 20th in points entering Saturday’s action at Pocono Raceway (4 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The field has gotten much more competitive than in prior seasons, with the likes of Hendrick Motorsports, Viking Motorsports and Jeremy Clements Racing upping resources.
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“I would tell you that we’ve got half of what I was looking for,” Burton said of the alliance. “We’ve moved up on the grid, for sure. The next gap is where it makes my job easier because my car is so much faster. We’re getting there.”
Compared to recent years, JAR has more access to setups on the aerodynamic side, an area where smaller organizations are hindered.
“It’s all the things that you can’t see that make these race cars go fast,” Burton said.
RCR leadership is invested in the success of its alliance partners. As those teams grow stronger, the alliance gains additional depth, creating a mutually beneficial relationship. Ultimately, teams still need to have good fortune; the No. 27 car has DNF’d in a quarter of the races this season.
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“The biggest thing is looking at the stuff that has happened on track this year has been unfortunate: wrong place, wrong time,” Anderson said. “You look at Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta, we’ve had a couple of them that are should have, could have, would have. Every year, we try to get a little better as an organization. The goal this year was to add depth, and I think we’ve done that with guys at the shop, traveling on the road.
“Our sim program has gotten a lot better on the Chevrolet side. The RCR alliance has helped us with the chassis and parts-wise. We knew there was going to be some growing time to get this going, and we’ve got to dig our heels in to get that program rolling. Hopefully, this summer we will start to see some of those benefits.”
MORE: O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule
Burton is leaving room for optimism within the No. 27 team for that alluded summer surge.
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“To be honest, if we can finish top 15 in points, that’s a good year for us,” Burton said. “It’s realistic. When we go back to Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega, let’s try to have a chance to win. At the other tracks, let’s try to get as many top 10s as we can and keep building our program because I think we still have room for improvement, so this time next year we’re in the playoffs.
“If you go back to last year, we were right there on the cusp of the playoffs. I’m a competitor, and I don’t want to just make the playoffs. I want to try to win the championship. We’re not there as a company yet, but for us to make the playoffs, is winning the championship.”
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