Jake Crum and JT Motorsports qualified for the SMART Modified Tour championship playoffs, but their title hopes and their partnership came to an end last Saturday night at Tri-County Motor Speedway.

Crum made it through the first round elimination scoring a third-place finish. But the North Carolina driver’s luck ran out when his Jamie Tomaino owned No. 99 exited the Freeman Hoosier 99 at Tri-County with mechanical problems.  

Crum gave a fiery interview on the FloRacing broadcast telling pit reporter Derek Persnesiglio that “this thing has been a s-–t box all day. We get what s–t boxes get.”

With the no. 99 behind the wall after 86-laps, Crum was officially eliminated from contention for the Championship finale at North Wilkesboro Speedway. 

On Tuesday, JT Motorsports released a statement that the team and Crum have parted ways. The statement reads, “First and foremost we would like to thank Jake Crum. We had a heck of a season. The whole JT Motorsports team wishes you the best in your racing future.”

The Tomaino team also dropped the news that the no. 99 will be piloted by rookie SMART racer Bryce Bailey in the season finale Frontier Natural Gas 99.  They also announced that CARS Tour drivers Carson Loftin and Conner Jones will drive their two cars in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour finale at Martinsville Speedway on October 23rd. 

On Tuesday morning Jake Crum told FloRacing that will be racing the SMART finale at North Wilkesboro in a Paul French owned Modified. French is already fielding a car for Connecticut driver Anthony Bello. Jake currently has the French-owned Modified in his North Carolina shop. He also broke the news to us that he will compete at Martinsville for the no. 79 Hillbilly Racing team.