Raphaël Lessard will not race in the Nascar Xfinity Series this season

The day after the unveiling of the list of 42 riders for the event scheduled for Saturday at the Richmond circuit, in Virginia, the names of Lessard and his team, SQR Developpement, are conspicuous by their absence, the Journal de Québec tells us this morning.

The 20-year-old driver from Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce had not heard from his team for a while, created in 2021 by JC Stout, an ex-driver with a poor record of eight retirements and a 37^and place in nine starts in the Xfinity Series, from 2008 to 2010.

Lessard therefore contacted JC Stout, who would then have mentioned « personal reasons » preventing him from registering him in the race, but probably that Stout wanted to use Lessard’s notoriety to attract sponsors, which would not have worked.

Raphaël Lessard still has a few races on the agenda this year, on April 16 in the LMS stock-car series, then in the Canadian NASCAR Pinty’s series as well as on clay.