Stewart Friesen and Halmar-Friesen Racing Forms Technical Alliance With GMS Racing

Story By: MATTHEW WIERNASZ / RPW – STATESVILLE, NC – It was made official on Wednesday that Halmar Friesen Racing (HFR), and driver Stewart Friesen, will form a technical alliance with defending NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Championship team GMS Racing for the rest of the 2017 season and moving forward. The team has separated ties with Tommy Baldwin, who they were aligned with to begin the season.

The biggest thing it will add is depth to their team. Team manager Willy Auchmoody talked to Race Pro Weekly on Wednesday night about the move

“We have a rookie driver in Stewart (Friesen),” Auchmoody said. “I really feel he’s done better than we could have expected with adapting to the different tracks that we go to…some places he’s never even seen.”

Friesen and HFR had some bad luck in the beginning of the year…a lot of it didn’t fall on Stewart. Auchmoody feels that when you go with a group like GMS that has so many years in the Truck Series and a lot of experience with rookie drivers, it should accelerate the learning curve even more than where the team is now.

Even though GMS has a technical alliance with Hendrick Motorsports, Halmar-Friesen Racing will stick with ECR Engines where they have a contract until the end of the year. The team plans to honor their contract and will not be switching to Hendrick. Auchmoody thinks his team will switch to the Ilmor spec engine next year, as the engine will be an option in 2018 for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. It is currently used in the ARCA Series.

Auchmoody feels it makes sense to switch to this engine package and will be a big savings for his team. This season, the team is spending about $700,000 on their engine program. For 2018, that number could be about $300,000 and should reduce to about $100,000 in 2019.

This is it’s a great opportunity for a smaller team to get going in the right direction, according to Auchmoody. He thinks this should save teams around a million dollars, as a budget to run in the Truck Series is around three million dollars.

“It’s just too much money,” he said. “The prize money is not there. The sponsorship opportunities aren’t available at those levels. If you can get it to where the series cost a million to a million and a half, now you have a viable product that you can sell. A company that can’t afford five to twenty million dollars to go Cup or XFINITY racing can afford to spend a million to a million and a half in trucks.”

The NASCAR XFINITY Series is coming out with composite bodies, and there is talk about that making its way to the Truck Series in 2019. Auchmoody feels that will save the team around a quarter of million dollars. For a season, if they go to the composite body and the spec engines, those two changes could significantly reduce the budget a team needs.

Again, that’s a step in the right direction according to Auchmoody. He would also like to see the series run more one-day events. That would help out the smaller teams as they can practice, qualify, and race all in one day.

The alliance with GMS is for chassis and aerodynamics support, as their team is in the wind tunnel on a monthly basis with their trucks. That’s something HFR hasn’t been able to do with their previous situation because they didn’t have the depth. The #52 truck itself may not get to the wind tunnel, but if one of the GMS trucks does, they would have access to that information. If they try different shocks or other things on their trucks, HFR would have access to that as well.

Now, Friesen’s team started the season in a technical alliance with Tommy Baldwin. They were suppose to be working with GMS Racing, but that never materialized. Auchmoody can’t put his finger on what happened. It just didn’t seem to blossom to what they had hoped for in the beginning of the year.

After being involved with the team last season, Auchmoody left at the start of 2017. However, he rejoined the team just before the even in July at Kentucky. That’s where he started to build back the relationship with GMS.

HFR is a Chevrolet team and the manufacturer was instrumental in helping the team out when they needed it. Over the last three to four weeks, they have developed a good relationship and recently, over the last couple days, the move to GMS seemed like a viable option. It was almost a smooth transition for HFR.

The team will not attempt the race at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park next weekend or possibly Chicagoland Speedway on September 15th. Their targeting New Hampshire on September 23rd as their next event. Auchmoody feels they may not get their equipemnt turned around fast enough for Chicagoland, but there is an outside chance they could make it. No matter what, their goal is to hit the ground running at Loudon.

When speaking of turnaround, its pretty simple. In order to be truly aligned with GMS, HFR will have to make adjustments to their current trucks to make them the same as the GMS machines. However, the Gallager team has done some work for HFR. Several of their current trucks have GMS clips on them and the changeover has already started.

It’s just a matter of getting the equipment converted over and changed to GMS specs. Their team want things alike so everyone is on the same page with information.

Overall, it’s been a big transition for Friesen to step into the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. There has been good days as well as some bad. Auchmoody believes that the “Canadian Sensation” has been able to handle things that come at him very well and that the team supports him 100%. He has watched Friesen saved the truck a few times and feels he’s a natural, but just had tough luck in the beginning of the year.

Since Kentucky, things have started to turn around. The team skipped events at Iowa and Gateway, which Auchmoody feels has allowed Friesen to grow into an asphalt driver. He feels the alliance with GMS will allow Stewart to grow even more. However, it was his dirt prowess that helped him gain some notoriety. Friesen stole the show in the Truck race at Eldora, leading laps and opened the eyes of a lot of fans. After that, when they went to the other races, people started to know who Friesen was.

Dirt racing here in the Northeast has a huge following, and Friesen’s schedule for that will remain the same. Auchmoody was shocked at Pocono just how many people had Stewart Friesen dirt racing t-shirts when they did the autograph session for him at the Team Chevrolet tent. He couldn’t believe how many dirt race fans were coming up to him. He felt it was pretty awesome.

There were other people coming up to him that we’re Matt Sheppard or Brett Hearn fans. He may rub nerf bars with them, They were saying they weren’t fans on the dirt series because may like Sheppard or Larry Wight or their certain driver, but were pulling for him to be successful in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series because you’re one of ‘our guys.’

Most of the team members at Halmar-Friesen Racing will be staying as Trip Bruce will stay on as crew chief. Auchmoody knows that these guys bust their butts at the track and do a great job. The crew members will also get to work with the GMS Racing team.

Their crew chief will get to meet with the GMS Racing crew chiefs after each practice and qualifying as well as do pre-race strategy and Stewart will now get to sit in on the drivers meetings with GMS drivers Johnny Sauter, Kaz Grala, and Justin Haley.

It will be great depth, and that’s what the entire Halmar-Friesen team excited about.