Ray Ciccarelli


Ray Ciccarelli is an American professional stock car racing driver. He currently competes part-time in the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series, driving the No. 49 Chevrolet Silverado for CMI Motorsports. He has also competed in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East and the ARCA Menards Series.
Ciccarelli has said he will retire at the end of the 2020 season due to the decisions by NASCAR banning the display of the Confederate flag from their sporting events.

Racing career

ARCA Racing Series

Ciccarelli drove part-time in the series in 2014, 2015, and 2016 for teams Carter 2 Motorsports, Kimmel Racing, Hamilton-Hughes Racing, and Hixson Motorsports. He started his own team, Ciccarelli Racing, for 2017. The team's first race came in the season-opener at Daytona where Ciccarelli finished 21st in his No. 38 Ford after a solid seventh-place qualifying run. The team returned at Talladega, although they used owner points from the full-time Hixson Motorsports No. 3 car to have a better shot of qualifying for the race. Using that number instead of the No. 38, they picked up a thirteenth-place finish in the race. Ciccarelli had driven for the Hixson team in a few races in 2016.

Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series

In 2017, Ciccarelli made his Truck Series debut in the Eldora Dirt Derby, driving the No. 10 truck for Jennifer Jo Cobb Racing. He started 32nd and finished 22nd. After that, he start-and-parked the No. 0 truck for the same team in 4 races at Michigan, New Hampshire, Texas, and Phoenix. He finished 26th, 29th, 28th, and 26th respectively. He returned to the No. 10 truck at Homestead. He qualified 31st, but an engine malfunction before the green flag waved gave him a 32nd-place finish.
In 2019, Ciccarelli acquired trucks, equipment, and owner points from the closed Premium Motorsports No. 49 truck and restarted his own team, now under the name CMI Motorsports, which stood for "Ciccarelli Moving & Installation", a company owned by Ciccarelli and which is one of the team's sponsors. After running the first two races of the season, Ciccarelli and the CMI Motorsports team skipped the third round at Las Vegas with a planned comeback for the fourth round at Martinsville.

NASCAR departure announcement

On June 10, 2020, Ciccarelli announced on Facebook that he intended to retire from NASCAR at the end of the 2020 season, decrying recent decisions by NASCAR that he believed ventured into the realm of politics. The announcement came after NASCAR's decision to ban the presence of the Confederate flag at their events, due to the flag's longtime association with white supremacist groups, in the midst of the George Floyd protests. Other NASCAR drivers praised the ban.

Motorsports career results

NASCAR

Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series

Busch East Series

ARCA Racing Series