Athenian Motorsports

History

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Athenian Motorsports page on 16 June 2016, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Athenian Motorsports is an American professional stock car racing team that currently competes in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, the Camping World Truck Series, and the ARCA Racing Series. In the Xfinity Series, the team currently fields the No. 05 Zaxby's Chevrolet Camaro part-time for John Wes Townley. In the Camping World Truck Series, the team currently fields the No. 05 Zaxby's Chevrolet Silverado full-time for John Wes Townley. In the ARCA Racing Series, the team currently fields the No. 05 Zaxby's Chevrolet Impala part-time for John Wes Townley. The team is sponsored by Zaxby's Chicken Restaurants, co-founded by John Wes' father and team owner Tony Townley, and the team name is likely a reference to the company's home in Athens, Georgia.

The team debuted in May 2014 in the Nationwide Series (now Xfinity Series) running a partial schedule. In July 2014, the team expanded their operation into the Camping World Truck Series. In September, it was announced that veteran crew chief Mike Ford would join the team as the crew chief for the No. 25 Nationwide Series team, while Mike Beam would stay on as the crew chief of the No. 05 truck. The team also purchased the race shop of Richard Petty Motorsports owned by Boris Said near the Concord Regional Airport.

In November 2014 the team announced it would switch to Chevrolet and run full-time in both the Xfinity Series and Truck Series, with engines supplied by Hendrick Motorsports, and equipment purchased from Kyle Busch Motorsports and the defunct Turner Scott Motorsports (a former Hendrick-affiliated team). Townley would pilot the Truck Series entry full-time and run the majority of the Xfinity Series races.

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