Seven wins and five poles in two seasons is not the résumé of a crew chief anyone expects to lose. Yet Shane van Gisbergen will start 2027 with a new voice on the radio, and Justin Marks, the Trackhouse Racing owner, says the decision was anything but sudden. Why it landed on a Hendrick Motorsports name says plenty about how Trackhouse builds.
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That name is Blake Harris, Alex Bowman’s crew chief at Hendrick, who will take over the No. 97 Chevrolet. Marks said the interest stretched back well before this offseason.
“We’ve had our eye on Blake for, you know, really, like a year. And I think probably just because he’s regarded in the garage area as being a very, very smart guy and really understands vehicle speed, and has a lot of talents, skills, and abilities, kind of adjacent to the crew chief role, just in car builds and development and things like that,” Marks told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on X.
Harris’ appeal went beyond the pit box. His reputation in the garage rests on understanding speed, car builds and development, skills that can serve Trackhouse’s entire competition program rather than one team on race weekends. In other words, Trackhouse was thinking about the shop as much as the pit box.
Marks was not reacting to Stephen Doran’s departure. Trackhouse Racing was waiting for the right moment to approach Harris, helped by its existing relationship with Hendrick and the partner group connecting the two organizations.
“If the opportunity with Hendrick and our relationship and the key partner group comes up that we can have a conversation with Blake about some role in the company, we really wanted to pursue that,” Marks explained.
That window opened when Doran received an offer from Spire Motorsports, where he will lead Michael McDowell’s No. 71 Chevrolet in 2027 after working with the organization in 2024. Marks stressed that the move was not simply Trackhouse wanting a change.
“At the same time, Stephen on the 71 got an opportunity to crew chief, at a place that was really interesting to him,” he said.
Van Gisbergen himself had hinted at what was coming. After Martinsville, he told reporters that “big team changes” were coming for 2027.
Doran leaves behind a strong record with the driver. Together they won seven Cup races and took five poles, including five victories during SVG’s 2025 breakout full-time season and wins at Watkins Glen and Sonoma in 2026.
Harris, meanwhile, had no interest in stepping away from the pit box.
“Turns out, Blake really wants to keep crew chiefing, and he’s got a lot of, a lot of passion and desire to continue to be successful as the crew chief,” Marks added.
That mattered. Trackhouse was landing someone motivated to own a Cup team’s performance, not just a technical hire. Marks called it an “everybody-wins scenario,” with Doran getting the opportunity he wanted and Trackhouse securing a candidate it had monitored for months.
Harris arrives with experience at the sport’s top level. His partnership with Bowman produced a 2024 Chicago Street Course victory. That win came on a street course, the kind of venue where van Gisbergen has already proven formidable.
For SVG, the hire follows another season of progress. He finished 17th in the 2026 standings, posting career highs of six top-fives and 10 top 10s. Both of his wins came on road courses, but his improvement on ovals was encouraging. Closing that gap is where the 2027 gains will be found, and that is now Harris’ job.
Hendrick Motorsports is not the first team to lose talent to Trackhouse
Trackhouse has done this before. Ahead of 2026, it brought Brandon McSwain over from Hendrick, where he engineered William Byron‘s No. 24 team, and made him Ross Chastain‘s crew chief in the No. 1 Chevrolet. Phil Surgen moved into another role within the organization. The move gave McSwain his first full-time Cup crew chief job, and as with Harris, Chastain had long believed in him.
Such exchanges are routine in the Cup Series, where crew chiefs and engineers carry setup philosophies and development methods between rivals. Hendrick has benefited from recruiting experienced personnel elsewhere, too. The latest shuffle also reconnects familiar faces. Harris worked with McDowell at Front Row Motorsports in 2022, and Doran will now lead McDowell’s team at Spire.
For Marks, the takeaway is simple. This was a long-planned pursuit rather than an offseason scramble. The pairing’s first outing comes at the Wheatley Vodka Clash on February 13, and it gives van Gisbergen a new voice in the pit box as Trackhouse prepares for 2027.