Aric Almirola departed Joe Gibbs Racing dissatisfied following the 2007 season. He went on to have a quality Cup Series career, spanning nearly two decades.
Almirola, at the time a JGR developmental driver, was disgruntled after being pulled at the Milwaukee Mile in a dominant performance. Denny Hamlin was pulling double duty, jetting halfway across the country from Sonoma Raceway to Milwaukee, but he missed the start of the race. Almirola qualified on the pole and led the opening 43 laps. Hamlin swapped in once he arrived at the facility and won the race. Because Almirola started the race, he was credited with the victory.
“I left because I was disappointed with the way things were handled at Milwaukee and I had opportunities to leave, and I took them,” Almirola recently told Jayski.com. “When I told JD [Gibbs] that I was leaving, he told me, ‘I hope you will be back.’”
Mark Martin provided an opportunity to Almirola to split the No. 8 Cup Series car with him for the 2008 season. Almirola remained friendly with JD Gibbs and they were always graceful with each other. They formed a tight bond, “a brother in Christ.”
That close relationship always stuck with Almirola while he chased success at the Cup level. But he never actually thought he would return to JGR until Joe Gibbs sat him down towards the end of the 2023 season.
At the time, Almirola thought he would quit competing in NASCAR. But as many racecar drivers do, he pondered retirement. Gibbs had an opportunity in the Xfinity Series, and originally tried to get the Florida native to run the full 2024 season.
“I wanted to do less than what he wanted me to,” Almirola mentioned of his conversation with Gibbs. “When we first talked about it, he talked about running full time and I was like, ‘Coach, I cannot tell Janice [his wife] that I’m retiring from full time racing to go full time racing. We talked more about it and it was like, ‘Alright, what does it look like if I run 24 races?’ As things started to materialize with sponsorships and other opportunities for other drivers to come in, we settled on 15 races and that was a great number for me.”
Almirola’s 2024 schedule would be split up throughout the season. He wanted the majority of the summer off to travel to Utah with his family, and to visit multiple Major League Baseball stadiums. His schedule was frontloaded, competing in four of the opening seven races with JGR and only one more over the next three-and-a-half months.
Putting his experience to use, Almirola was dominant in Richmond, sweeping both stages. He dropped to second in the finishing order, trailing his JGR teammate Chandler Smith. But the following week at Martinsville, he led 148 of 251 laps en route to the victory. Being able to win early was Almirola’s way of repaying the favor to the Gibbs family.
“My primary goal when I came back to Joe Gibbs Racing was to win,” Almirola said. “If I’m going to come do this, I desperately want to win. I want to win for the team, win for the organization, Coach and the Gibbs family. They have meant so much to me. I wouldn’t be where I’m at today or wouldn’t have had the career that I’ve had in this sport if it wasn’t for that phone call from Coach and JD when they told me I had the job to come race a late model back in 2003.”
In Almirola’s first seven starts back with JGR, he had a competitive car in each race and was in contention to win four of them. He played a part in an epic last-lap battle at Indianapolis with his former Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Riley Herbst and Cole Custer, placing third.
Having an established driver helped rookie crew chief Tyler Allen get up to speed at the position. The No. 20 car has won a series-high eight races, including a second triumph from Almirola to kick off the 2024 Playoffs over the weekend at Kansas. The No. 20 team has clinched a spot into the Round of 8.
“[Almirola] has so much experience, and I think he brings a lot of that knowledge to the table in our driver meetings,” Allen said. “Even me as a rookie crew chief, he will bring up things that I’m not thinking about. That’s been nice to learn from along the way.”
Behind the scenes, Almirola is helping mentor some of the Toyota developmental drivers. That’s a new role for him, but he’s been a sounding board, allowing those drivers to ask questions.
“He brings experience, a good guy; people like being around him and he shares all the information and experience that he has and willing to put it on the table,” Steve deSouza, JGR’s EVP NASCAR Xfinity Series/Development, said while admitting there was “unfinished business” with Almirola. “A lot of people aren’t willing to do that or don’t know how to do that. He’s versed in that and very easy to talk to. I think the younger guys appreciate that openness.
“It’s valuable for sure to have someone like that. We will see what happens as we move into the offseason.”
Almirola will pilot the No. 20 car for the remaining six races in 2024, chasing the owner’s championship for JGR. All the while, he will contemplate about what’s next.
It’s entirely possible that this is Almirola’s last hoorah. He’s leaned on some of his friends within the racing industry who have recently retired. Admittedly, Almirola doesn’t know what’s on the table for 2025.
“I think this year has been a great opportunity to have a soft landing,” he added. “Quitting cold turkey is hard. I talked to Jimmie Johnson for a while about retiring. Obviously, he’s still dabbling and the reason is because it’s hard. Jimmie used this expression and it really resonated with me: Someone that plays a guitar in a band can retire from being on tour and they can stop playing in a band, but just because they retire from playing in a band and going on tour doesn’t mean that they have to stop picking up a guitar.”
Recently, Almirola spoke with 2025 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Ricky Rudd about retirement and what it looks like on the other side. He hasn’t made up his mind just yet on if he’s done chasing his dream.
“I haven’t really come to that conclusion that I don’t ever want to strap into a racecar anymore because I love it,” Almirola said.