Gragson: ‘Dega ‘A Good Building Moment’ For Front Row

FORT WORTH, Texas — Noah Gragson has every reason to be confident after a season-best fourth-place result at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway last Sunday, the latest building block in his early tenure with Front Row Motorsports.

Talladega marked an evening when Gragson emerged from his No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse believing he was going home sixth, until two separate spoiler violations discovered in post-race inspection on the Fords of Ryan Preece and Joey Logano sent them to the tail-end of the finishing order.

That set up Gragson for his first top-five finish with the Front Row organization. Needless to say, it was a nice pick-me-up for Gragson once he landed back in North Carolina after the race.

“We were landing on the flight home and got word of it that we ended up fourth. I was like, ‘Heck, yeah.’ That’s good for the Racing Reference (statistics website),” Gragson said. “You take top fives any way you can get them, but we ran good at Talladega last year. We finished third and then ultimately, to come home in sixth and then get moved up to fourth, Talladega in the spring has been pretty good to us.

“It’s good to get a top five.”

The Las Vegas native is keenly aware of his results online thus far in 2025, and how they don’t quite translate to the speed he and his team have been able to show. Admittedly for Gragson, the issue remains closing out those precious opportunities on track.

“It’s not been a great year result-wise. I think we’ve had some good runs and good speed throughout the races, just closing them out and finishing them off we haven’t finished the way we need to be,” Gragson said. “Hopefully, it’s a good building moment for our group and good motivation and confidence that we can take to these next handful of racetracks.”

Gragson’s Talladega top five was his best finish for FRM and bettered his only other top 10 of the year from Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, back in March.

As for what it will take for more consistency in the No. 4 camp? Gragson looked back on a couple of races so far where better finishes were left on the table, starting with his hometown race.

“(Las) Vegas, we were running sixth or seventh and got in a wreck with (Ryan) Blaney down the back straightaway with maybe 60 to go, so we were having a pretty solid run there. Atlanta, we were kind of biding our time there and Suarez comes up the racetrack and clips us. It’s just kind of silly wrecks and getting involved with them, but it really just comes down to needing to go faster so we’re not in those positions,” noted the Sin City native. “If you’re leading the race, the odds are you’re not going to be around that stuff.

“Ultimately, we just have to go faster, and I think we’ve got a team that can do it.”

That team is Front Row, which expanded to a three-car stable for 2025 after buying one of the former Stewart-Haas Racing charters and also touts one of the younger driver lineups in the Cup Series garage.

Between 24-year-old Todd Gilliland, and 25-year-old Zane Smith, 26-year-old Gragson can be seen as a relative elder statesman, but that fact doesn’t seem to bother him.

“It’s kind of business as usual,” Gragson said plainly. "You've got stability and it’s a good place for me. I really enjoy my teammates, Todd and Zane. I really enjoy the people I work with. When you go to work and you’re having fun and you’re enjoying yourself, I think it makes it that much better and you can take it up an extra notch. Just showing up with excitement every day makes it better.”

The present looks positive for Gragson, and it only makes it more fulfilling when remembering what he’s persevered through recently at the Cup Series level to reach this spot.

After a 2023 suspension that upended his career trajectory and forced a comeback effort, what was meant to be a multi-year deal with Stewart-Haas Racing starting in 2024 turned upside down that May, when Gragson and the sport found out that SHR was shutting down at the end of that season.

It meant he would have to try and land back on his feet again.

But looking back on it now, Gragson is pleased to see where he and his former SHR teammates ended up since that fateful decision, and sees himself in a much more stable spot at FRM.

“Yeah, I think we’re all kind of settled into that new home we’re at,” said Gragson. “Josh [Berry] obviously has done a great job this year getting the win at Vegas. [Ryan] Preece has had a lot of speed that he might not have had last year. Myself, I feel like I’m in a better position here at Front Row Motorsports. I have a lot of similar crew guys that I had on my team last year, but I’m just really enjoying what we’ve got here at Front Row, and then Chase Briscoe has had a lot of speed. He sat on the pole at the Daytona 500 and stuff like that is pretty cool to see. I’m happy for all of their success.

“All of us going in our own separate directions, still at the end of the day it’s pretty cool to see those guys having success and I’m happy for them as well. I feel like I’m in a great spot here at Front Row Motorsports,” Gragson continued. “Bob Jenkins and Jerry Freeze have a great vision and I’m thankful for the opportunity to race here. Our cars are fast. We haven’t had the results we want, but in racing when you don’t have speed, you’re really scratching your head. Right now, I feel like we have some decent speed, it’s just about putting the whole race together.

“I’m probably not as stressed out right now as maybe I was around this time last year, just because I feel like we’re in a good spot.”

Moving forward to Texas Motor Speedway, a racetrack where Gragson has only raced twice for two different teams in the Next-Gen car with results outside the top 15, he pointed to a major factor that causes the 1.5-mile quad-oval to age much differently than other comparable venues.

“Yeah, there are no beaches around,” Gragson said candidly. “That's why the place doesn’t age, in my opinion. You look at Darlington and Homestead; I don’t know if they’re using asphalt from around those places, but it seems like the sand peels away and then you’ve got those sharp, jagged rocks that stick out of the surface and that is what, in my opinion, causes the tire wear.

“I don’t really think it’s too sandy out in the middle of Texas … I don’t know where they get their asphalt, but it certainly is a one, maybe a two-lane track, and it definitely feels like ice out there.”

Not only will the icy surface be a hurdle to overcome, but Gragson also added that turns three and four at Texas pose a challenge to navigate them consistently without scrubbing off too much speed.

“You kind of just lose the nose a little bit through three and four at Texas,” Gragson tipped. “Just being mindful of being aimed and pointed in the right direction that you want to be to be able to finish the corner with throttle – definitely timing on the steering wheel and timing on where you let out of the throttle to get your car pointed in that direction.

“I would compare it a little bit to a hiccup. You hit it and you’re like, ‘Oh.’ It’s a little hiccup of a bump, but it’s not too bad.”

After a very successful NASCAR Xfinity Series tenure, and all the trials Gragson has faced in his Cup Series career to-date, a fourth place finish looks like the first payment of dividends for a young talent who has already been around the block a time or two.

Broadcast coverage of the Wurth 400 presented by LIQUI MOLY at Texas is set for Sunday, May 4 at 3:30 p.m. ET, live on FS1, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.