CMI Motorsports is an American professional stock car racing team that currently competes in the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series, fielding the No. 49 Chevrolet Silverado full-time for Ray Ciccarelli, Bayley Currey, and Tim Viens; as well as, the No. 83 part- time for multiple drivers. The team also previously fielded a car in the ARCA Menards Series, the No. 38, part-time in 2017. Although the team is currently in operation, Ciccarelli announced on June 10, 2020 that he would be closing down the team and selling off all its equipment after the conclusion of the 2020 Truck Series season. His decision to shut down his race team came in response to NASCAR's announcement on the same day that they would be banning the display of the Confederate flag from all tracks following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests happening in the world at the time. Ciccarelli believed that the sport was getting too political and unnecessarily taking sides in those matters.
History
ARCA Racing Series
Car No. 38 history
Ciccarelli ran the season-opener at Daytona in 2017 with his own team, the No. 38 Ford, under the name Ciccarelli Racing. It was not his first race in the series, as he previously drove part-time in the series in 2014, 2015, and 2016 for teams Carter 2 Motorsports, Kimmel Racing, Hamilton-Hughes Racing, and Hixson Motorsports. Ciccarelli returned with his team to Talladega, although he drove the No. 3 instead of the No. 38, using owner points from Hixson to have a better shot of qualifying for the race, which he successfully did. The No. 3 was running the full season while the No. 38 had only attempted Daytona. He started his team after buying a superspeedway Ford car from Lira Motorsports, an ARCA team which fielded multiple cars in 2016 but had downsized to one car due to financial problems for the 2017 season and therefore was selling off equipment.
The team was restarted in 2019 when Ciccarelli, who previously drove in the Truck Series part-time for Jennifer Jo Cobb Racing, bought trucks and equipment from Premium Motorsports, which closed down their Truck Series team after the 2018 season. He kept the same number that Premium ran with, the No. 49, and the owner points that their No. 49 accumulated the prior year. The name of the team was CMI Motorsports, which stands for "Ciccarelli Moving & Installation", a company owned by Ciccarelli and which is one of the team's sponsors. The team made its debut at the season-opening 2019 NextEra Energy 250 at Daytona, where Ciccarelli successfully qualified for the race. However, he finished 28th after a crash ended his hopes of a good run. Ciccarelli attempted a part-time schedule for the rest of that season, totaling about half of the races. This included an upset ninth-place finish at Michigan. The team had two other surprisingly strong runs that year at Texas in March and Pocono, both top-20 finishes. For 2020, the No. 49 started the year with Ciccarelli himself behind the wheel of truck, failing to qualify for the season-opener at Daytona with Ciccarelli, unlike the previous year. The team signed Bayley Currey on January 30, 2020 to drive for them at the following race at Las Vegas. In that announcement, CMI indicated that the No. 49 would be attempting the first five races to start the year. Currey ended up driving the next two races at Charlotte and Atlanta. He was supposed to have competed at Homestead but left the team in what was considered by many to be a one-screen departure after Ciccarelli made his remarks about the Confederate flag.
Truck No. 83 history
CMI debuted a second truck, the No. 83, at the second race of the 2020 season at Las Vegas with Stefan Parsons driving it. It was also entered in the next two races at Charlotte and Atlanta with T. J. Bell driving it.
