With his NASCAR team rolling, Justin Marks sneaks away to fuel his passion at Road America

ELKHART LAKE – The past two weeks, he has been the most successful team owner in NASCAR.

On this day, though, Justin Marks was far away from the big show outside Atlanta, reminding himself how invigorating fun racing can be when you can strip away the complexities of the business behind the sport.

Marks, 42, co-owns Trackhouse Racing, the second-year team that won the inaugural Chicago street race Sunday with Shane van Gisbergen and a week earlier at Nashville Superspeedway with Ross Chastain.

And he’ll get back to that. But not until he’s done racing at Road America with the Trans Am Series in the Denny Lamers Tribute 100 scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Saturday.

Marks, who won one Xfinity Series race in 81 starts in NASCAR’s top three divisions, spoke with the Journal Sentinel after practice Friday.

The weekend continues Sunday with the 3-Dimensional Services Group 100 for TA2 cars at 12:30 p.m.

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Q: How do you balance this stuff? I imagine the last couple of weeks have (been intense).

Marks: I think I do a pretty good job of not getting too high at the highs and just focusing on my people. I have really good people that run the business. I’ve gotten to a point now where I’m less of an operator and more of a vision guy and a leader and all that kind of stuff.

I’ve never lost my love for driving cars, for racing cars. This is something that’s valuable to me because it keeps me in touch with my passion for the sport I grew up doing. I’m able to come do this stuff and go back to the races sort of rejuvenated and passionate and excited, sort of like the first time I went to the racetrack. It’s important to step away from the pressures and worries of Cup racing and just race to have fun. It just keeps me loose.

Q: Did you ever step completely away from racing?

A: In 2018 I was pretty committed to ending my NASCAR career. So I ran my last race in ’18 and then ran IMSA in 2019 and then walked away from that to start Trackhouse. In ’20 and ’21 I did just a few races here and there just for fun, when I needed a break, but I never really thought I’d be racing as much as I have been this year.

My truck race last year and my Xfinity race this year was really just opportunities that came to me. Last year it was Worldwide Express asking me to drive their truck, which was amazing, and this year I lightly socialized I thought it’d be fun to participate in that race, and Jockey said, hey, we’ll sponsor it. Those things just sort of came to me.

But I’ve always felt like I’m going to drive something sort of forever. It’s just a matter of how. It just can’t be a drain on my job at Trackhouse. It’s still got to be fun and pressure-free.

Q: Your job and your escape from your job are essentially the same thing. Do you have other escapes to get completely away from motorsports to refresh yourself?

A: There’s things I like doing but just haven’t had time lately. I spent a lot of years in the mountains, climbing, going on expeditions. I haven’t had time to do that the last couple of years. Nowadays it’s just kind of hang out with my kids.

My kids are 9 and 6 and they’re growing up and I have a lot of fun with them and they don’t care if we won the race or if we finished in last place. They don’t care about any of that stuff. Being a dad is my real escape.

But this still feels like an escape because I get to drive and have fun driving. Running a team the level of Trackhouse is so much more than race cars. It’s HR, it’s managing people, it’s sales and partnerships, it’s maintaining relationships with all of our partners. It’s all the conversations we have with NASCAR. There’s so much of it that doesn’t have to do with race cars, so just coming to a racetrack and being able to drive is an escape.

Q: Did you understand (in your driving days) what all the business of racing (involves) and what you have to do now … did you realize what Chip (Ganassi) was dealing with?

A: I knew it was going to be a lot of work. I didn’t know truly how much work it was. I’ve been learning the last couple of years. Part of the challenge of it is no matter what you’re doing, managing 140 people is a lot of work, whether they’re manufacturing something or going racing or managing restaurants or whatever it is. Managing the people is what I had to learn and what I’m still learning how to do.

Q: How much do you directly do? You’re the vision guy …

A: I do a lot of it in the sense that I try to be present with the workforce. When I go to the shop, I try to be out on the shop floor as much as I can, talk to as many people as I can, at the racetrack just try to engage with everybody and be present. I don’t run HR, so it’s not necessarily managing any conflicts or anything like that. It’s just being present and having a relationship with my workforce.

Q: Trackhouse has taken off. How does it stack up with your expectations?

A: I’m still processing it. I wouldn’t have expected five wins in two years. That’s not really anything anyone in the company thought we would do. Everybody thought it was possible if we did all the right stuff. And I certainly would not have embarked on this mission and worked as hard as I have and so wholeheartedly committed to this if I didn’t think I was building a winning organization.

I think it just goes to show how talented our people are and the fact they truly are all moving in one direction. They’re excited about believing in a race team that’s making history, that’s doing things people didn’t think were possible to do. That’s what continues to motivate it so the momentum just continues to grow. It’s a really tough sport.

Momentum could change at any time. You could go into the playoffs, win the regular season and have three bad races and then you’re out. And then you have to manage that in the company. So what we’re trying to do is invest in the things that will survive all the different outcomes on the racetrack, that either galvanize us in the good days but also create strength to get through the headwinds and the tough times.

We actually didn’t have a good start to the year this year. The month and a half leading into Nashville was tough. So we had to keep everybody motivated, we had to continue to say that we have all the tools here we need, we have all the talent here we need to get back to victory lane. We know we can do this. Let’s just keep plugging along.

Q: You did the Xfinity race (at Chicago), you’ve done most of these but not all in Trans Am. By the end of the year how many races do you hope to have run?

A: I’d like to do as many as I can that don’t conflict with my job and don’t conflict with my family. I missed one of these races to take my wife to Spain. The last thing I want this to be is selfish. I would expect to do most of the remaining ones. I just don’t think there’s going to be any way I’m going to be able to do the finale, which is the same day as the Phoenix championship race. I’ll end up doing two-thirds of them, something like that.

Q: When you come in part-time, even with your talent and experience, what can you expect?

A: I’m trying to win the race. It just feels so good to win the race. These guys, the really like working on this car, they like working with me. We get in there, we hunker down and we work and try to build a fast car so that we can go win the race because it’s really fun to win. That’s it. It’s pretty simple.

Q: How serious about this are you; how do you balance the want to win with the idea that it’s part-time and it’s supposed to be an escape?

A: You don’t want to be so focused on winning that when you don’t you feel like the weekend was a failure or it’s a drag. Because it is fun for me. It’s fun for these guys. They really like doing it, and I really like working with them. We finished third at Mid-Ohio and we still counted it as a good day because I had to come from the back.

So I take it seriously in the sense that I approach it and work really hard at it but I don’t really put any pressure myself at all and I don’t put any pressure on these guys. I feel like if we’re working hard and having fun we’ll have good days and good results.

Q: Are there other cars you want to drive or series you want to race in?

A: As I’ve aged some of those things have gotten a little bit out of reach. I would have loved to race the 24 Hours of Le Mans but never had the opportunity to. It’s still probably possible, but I’m not trying to make it happen.

I would say as I get a little bit older where my desires would lie is I’m really into the history of the sport. I think it would be really fun to one day own some historically significant cars, like an old Formula One car from the ’70s or a GTP car or something like that would be really fun and go do Monterrey and those historic races.

Monterey Historics. They ran a historic Grand Prix at Long Beach this year. That’s really cool.

Q: Is that going to happen or something you want to happen?

A: I think it can happen. It’s just that’s the most expensive kind of racing you can do. One day. I like the history of the sport, and I think it’d be really fun to strap into a car from 50 years ago and see how fast I can drive it. But those cars cost a lot of money too. I don’t have that kind of discretionary income.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NASCAR team owner Justin Marks racing at Road America with Trans Am