RFK, Hendrick race engineer joins Front Row as crew chief in ’23

Front Row Motorsports announced Wednesday that Travis Peterson will join Michael McDowell’s No. 34 team and serve as his crew chief for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Peterson will join FRM and depart his position at RFK Racing as Chris Buescher’s race engineer. He will replace Blake Harris who was picked up by Hendrick Motorsports after 2022.

In 2022, Harris took over as McDowell’s crew chief after Stewart-Haas picked up Drew Blickensderfer. Blickensderfer was his crew chief for three seasons after replacing Derrick Finley in 2019.

Peterson is McDowell’s fourth crew chief in six seasons. While he only has five starts as a crew chief, he has extensive race engineer experience for RFK Racing and three other high-profile teams.

Peterson helped lead the No. 18 NASCAR K&N East team to the 2011 title as a race engineer intern. Three years later, he won the Xfinity title with Chase Elliott and was promoted to the No. 88 Cup team for 2015.

Peterson immediately won three races with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and stayed with the team until moving to Roush/RFK in mid-2018. He won one race with RFK, with Chris Buescher at Bristol in September.

Todd Gilliland will also receive a new crew chief in 2023 as Seth Barbour will become FRM’s technical director. No word on who will replace Barbour.