Josh Bilicki is no stranger to doing things the hard way. In 2026, that means going the extra mile — literally — as he is traveling from his Wisconsin home to help elevate SS GreenLight Racing during the race weekend.
Bilicki, a born cheesehead, has been around the NASCAR bubble for a decade. He has competed with ample underfunded teams, helping take care of their equipment while gaining experience. In 2024, he tested his talent in a pair of starts with Joe Gibbs Racing in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, highlighted by an eighth-place finish at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Those races opened Bilicki’s eyes to how large organizations operate. He has made a living with smaller race teams since 2016, however. This year, he’s been piloting the No. 07 Chevrolet, scoring seven top-20 finishes in the first 28 races.
“We’re not even aligned with a manufacturer, so we don’t have Chevy sim time. We don’t have the engineers running sim on their computers,” Bilicki told Jayski.com. “That’s the biggest difference maker from the big teams to the small teams.
“Driving the car, it drove similar to what we have here, it just did everything a little bit better but it wasn’t even noticeable in the seat. You are talking a tenth or two each corner, but at a track like Portland [International Raceway] where you have 10 corners, that adds up to a second around the lap. The Charlotte Roval, we qualified fourth in the Gibbs car and the next year, I felt like I drove even a better lap in the DGM car and I think we qualified 19th. You can only drive as hard as your equipment will let you.”
With limited funding, Bilicki and his backers had a decision to make on how they wanted to progress his career. In 2025, he competed in 20 events with DGM Racing while also running a sprint car and a sports car, for upward of 50 races overall. But he wanted a full-time gig in 2026.
Enter longtime car owner and former O’Reilly driver, Bobby Dotter.
“I paired my sponsorship budget up with some of what the team already had aligned,” Bilicki said. “The last couple of years, I jumped around. Every week could be a different car, so to be full time again in the 07 where you’re in the same car every single weekend, it’s nice to build consistency with the team.”
To have Bilicki, an experienced driver, was crucial for Dotter. He needs a driver who can take care of the equipment, some of which is as dated as far back as the Turner Motorsports days in the early 2010s. The team also had chassis formerly run by Richard Childress Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, among others.
“It’s really important because he really understands and has done this long enough, smart enough, to know risk versus reward as far as tearing the stuff up to gain a spot or two when you’re running back in 25th or whatever it is,” Dotter stated. “He’s smarter than that, so he helps the team out in those respects.”
Behind the scenes, Bilicki is often the one cutting deals to secure sponsorship. The No. 07 Chevrolet has featured 20 different companies as primary partners. Part of that has been SS GreenLight aligning with a marketing agency to secure additional funding.
“I would love to do 10 races in a race-winning car and try to win races, but my sponsorship budget is budgeted per race,” Bilicki added. “They can’t blow their entire budget for one race with Gibbs; it’s not feasible for them.
“I think we’ve found a home with small businesses that are partners of ours here in the O’Reilly Series. It comes down to budget and I’m happy with where I’m at.”
Bilicki travels to the track weekly, doing so while living north of Milwaukee. He sacrifices a lot of time, driving an hour-and-a-half to Chicago O’Hare International Airport as his main form of transportation to get direct flights to each race.
Bilicki has never lived in Charlotte — even while running the full 2021 Cup Series season with Rick Ware Racing — and has grown accustomed to doing things differently. This is his normal. He likes to land in the race market at least 24 hours in advance of opening practice in case there’s a lengthy delay.
“Travel for me has always been more lengthy,” Bilicki said. “Late night, early mornings. If I have a 7 a.m. flight, I’m up at 4 a.m. It’s not the end of the world, but if I have a 6 a.m. flight, then it’s 3 a.m. and it starts getting early and your day starts getting a little long. Once you land, you realize it’s still morning where you land. It’s just part of it. I knew that when I never moved.”
When Bilicki rolls through the track gates, he knows SS GreenLight Racing has raised the bar from previous seasons. For 2026, Dotter leased engines for the Nos. 0 and 07 cars to share for the full campaign, ensuring one receives the stronger powerplant each week.
The improvement, however, hasn’t been as steep as Dotter had hoped when he made the transaction. Instead, his focus is in other areas of improvement moving forward.
Dotter said: “I really wanted to take that out of the equation and it opened my eyes and showed me that I need to upgrade our equipment some because putting a little better engine in it wasn’t putting us in the top 20 like I want to be. Hindsight, it was wonderful, I loved it, the motors are definitely good, but it wasn’t the missing ingredient that I thought it was.”
The immediate goal for Bilicki is to improve on the No. 07 entry from its current ranking of 30th in the owners standings. With a handful of strong races to conclude the 2026 campaign, 27th place is in reach, 60 points ahead.
“On paper, 30th doesn’t look great, but compared to where this car was last year, it’s better and a stepping stone,” Bilicki concluded. “If we had a couple of races back from earlier in the year, I truly believe we would be closer to 25th where the 0 is.”