At the time of this writing Smithley has not been named to the No. 0 Chevrolet, however, it is expected that he'll return to this team in 2018. He ran the full schedule with this race team last year and earned two Top-10 and 13 Top-25 finishes. The seven DNF's that Smithley suffered chopped up his consistency and led to the 21st-place finish in the championship driver standings. It could be for this reason that the team has not rushed to name him the driver for the upcoming season. Still, the team plans to run the full schedule and has decent, multi-car equipment and personnel. That makes Smithley or any other driver a fairly valuable commodity in this team at this tier of the driver field.

Smithley’s rookie season in the Xfinity Series last year was a real learning experience. The 24-year-old Georgian started in all but one race of the 33-event schedule. Smithley didn’t crack the Top 10 at any point last season but he did grab a handful of Top-20 finishes along the way. His three DNF’s show that the young driver was running at the end of most races. However, the 24.0 average finish shows that the No. 0 team has a way to go before they’ll be considered a marginally competitive team. As of mid-January JD Motorsports and Smithley are still working out the details for the upcoming season, but that’s expected to be in place before the start of the campaign.