Chip Gaines Already Has a New Gig: The Fixer Upper Star is Steering His Career in a New Direction

 

Fixer Upper may be ending after its upcoming 5th season, but host Chip Gaines isn’t ready to live life in the slow lane. The celebrity contractor already has a new gig, and it’s miles from his Magnolia businesses.

Gaines, 42, will be getting behind the wheel as the honorary pace car driver for the AAA Texas 500 race, according to an announcement he retweeted from Texas Motor Speedway.

“I’m honored to have been invited to drive the pace car in November, but I can’t promise that I’ll pull over after the first lap,” Gaines jokes in an interview on the speedway’s website. “And growing up in Colleyville, this might actually be the first time I don’t get in trouble for speeding in Roanoke,” he adds, referencing his Texas hometown just outside the city where the race will happen on November 5.

RELATED: Chip Gaines Recalls Ill-Fated Mexico Trip That Had Joanna Threatening, ‘You Have Three Days to Get Back to Texas, or This Relationship Is Over’

ANNOUNCING: Chip Gaines from Fixer Upper, has been named as the honorary pace car driver for the AAA Texas 500! » http://bit.ly/2z2fZEi http://pic.twitter.com/CWIMWhSWZU

— Texas Motor Speedway (@TXMotorSpeedway) October 3, 2017

His wife and costar Joanna, 39, need not worry about her accident-prone spouse speeding around the track, however. According to the announcement, Gaines will take part in some pre-race events before leading the group of 40 drivers, including the Round of 8 championship contenders, to the starting line in front of more than 100,000 fans — all at a very reasonable speed.

The Gaineses announced on September 26 that they would be ending their hit HGTV show after its fifth season, which premieres in November. “While we are confident that this is the right choice for us, it has for sure not been an easy one to come to terms with,” they wrote in a post on their blog. “Our family has grown up alongside yours, and we have felt you rooting us on from the other side of the screen. How bittersweet to say goodbye to the very thing that introduced us all in the first place.”

RELATED: Joanna Almost Wasn’t the One! Chip Gaines Reveals How He was ‘Hell-Bent’ on Making Another Woman His Wife

The couple’s portfolio of businesses includes retail compound Magnolia Market at the Silos (which draws up to 40,000 visitors every week); furniture lines; a quarterly magazine; a real estate company; two luxury vacation rentals; a soon-to-open restaurant and a New York Times bestselling book. Chip’s own tome, Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff, is due out October 17.