Joey Hand ready for opportunity with RFK Racing in Chicago

CHICAGO — Another Chicago Street Course race is here and another top NASCAR Cup Series team is locked and loaded with a heavyweight one-off entry.

Joey Hand will pilot the No. 60 Stage60 Ford Mustang for RFK Racing this weekend. Hand will make his first Cup Series start since the Charlotte Roval in October 2022.

While Hand has been out of the car for nearly two years, he’s been at the forefront of Ford’s Gen 7-era development on road courses. He said he was the first driver to test the Gen 7 car at the Charlotte Roval in 2021. He has also has been the go-to guy for Ford in the simulator.

“And these weeks when I’m helping everybody, I still will text with crew chiefs and Ford engineers and be like, ‘Hey, you know what? I just thought something from when we were doing that session last week. Maybe we should try this?” Hand said.

Hand developed a strong relationship with the engineers and personnel at Ford — including Brad Keselowski. That led to the opportunity he has this weekend.

“I just have a ton of respect for him. It’s pretty wild what he’s doing to come in and be an owner-driver is not easy. And I mean, we see why he’s had the success that he’s had. He has just massive work ethic to just get it done,” Hand said.

With RFK Racing, Hand has a chance to let his sports car experience shine. He has raced on a plethora of courses all over — from Long Beach, Cali. (“It’s one of my favorite races in the world. It’s one of my favorite venues in the world”) to Canadian courses like Trois Rivieres, Vancouver and Toronto — and major U.S. cities like Houston and Denver.

Hand has gained valuable experience in spades from also racing many different types of cars. He understands how to navigate obstacles, like crowned streets.

City streets are often crowned, meaning each side is sloped (usually away from the center of the road) to drain water away and prevent erosion.

Chicago is no different.

“If you look at track maps, they’re like 2D. If you look straight down, there are all those 90-degree corners kind of sorta, right? But you don’t drive them like that. You don’t drive them like a standard flat 90-degree corner. You have to really think about where that crown is and where you turn in,” Hand said.

Hand said the car is often off-camber going into the corner. That means the slope or banking is working against where the car is trying to turn. Then, as you drop over the crown, the car is on-camber again, meaning the slope is working with where the car is trying to turn.

“Then, you stay on-camber, normally through the apex of the crosswalk, if you will. And then you fly back out of that crown off-camber again,” Hand said.

Hand added every street is different and that there is an advantage to learning the nuances.

“The distance of the crowns away from apexes is different every corner and just the amount of crown is different every corner. And you have to play those crowns,” he said. “On Friday afternoon [during the track walk], I’ll be able to tell exactly what those crown heights look like and how much they drop in. At the apex is, again, a lot of those crosswalks, you will have like a little goal that you can use to hook the car.”

Hand comes into this weekend with some solid results in the Gen 7 car. In 2022, his best starts were ninth at Road America and 17th at Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen. In all, he amassed three Top-20 starts for Rick Ware Racing, which still is the best of any driver in the organization’s history.

Hand’s best finishes were 20th at Sonoma and 21st at Road America. He also earned stage points at the Indianapolis road course.

Indianapolis, though, didn’t net the results he desired. Although he led two laps and earned stage points, issues pushed him to 29th, one lap down, at the finish.

His other starts — at Circuit of the America, the Charlotte Roval and Watkins Glen were similar. At COTA, he finished 35th, out nine laps shy of the finish with suspension issues. At the Roval, he crashed out with 33 laps to go and finished 38th.

The issues at The Glen pushed him back to 31st because of factors he believes he can control this time around.

“I had a lot of fun doing it in 2022. We ran well a lot of time and had some opportunities that we didn’t really capitalize on. One time was my fault at Watkins Glen. I spun trying to pass so I just feel like there’s a better result in there,” Hand said.

Before getting back in the car, Hand is giving himself a “refresher course” on NASCAR racing and its rules that always evolving. Hand says pit road is important, especially how many pit boxes he can drive through on pit road entry without getting a penalty.

And remembering that he will have to maintain pit road speed himself.

“I just got done telling my crew chief, I’m like, ‘I’m gonna need you to be saying ‘pit speed, pit speed, pit speed when I’m leaving the box.” I’m used to coming out of the box wide open until it hits the limiter,” Hand said.

On the track, he’ll also getting ready for the fierce nature of restarts in NASCAR.

“I love racing, I’m a hard racer. But sometimes in sportscar racing, in the first hour, you might have a restart of a six-hour race or even a two-hour, four-minute race, you’re not ready to go knock dive planes or mirrors off. Or you know, body work. So here, it doesn’t matter what time of the race it is. When a restart happens, you’ve got to be up on it and ready to make moves,” Hand said.

Whatever come what may, it’s an opportunity for him to showcase his talent and help RFK Racing out.

And it’s an opportunity for his family too.

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“We’re a racing family. My son is a racer. And my wife and I met racing. We started dating when we were 16 years old. We met we were 12. And so we’re just a racing family. My daughter’s softball player, but she can drive too. But it’s just what we do. And so we love it,” Hand said.

Hand said the Monday after the Chicago race is the only day in a 29-day span when they’ll be home. After Chicago, he and his son, Chase Hand, will head to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park to race in IMSA.