{"id":289475,"date":"2025-11-17T19:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/289475\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T19:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:22:12","slug":"ram-to-initiate-all-star-truck-plan-for-new-nascar-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/289475\/","title":{"rendered":"Ram to initiate all-star truck plan for new NASCAR program"},"content":{"rendered":"

New NASCAR entrant Ram will have an all-star truck next season filled by big names in motorsports as one of its ways to create buzz and sell more vehicles in its return to racing. Part of the Stellantis holding company, Ram will re-enter NASCAR\u2019s third tier in 2026 ahead of sister brand Dodge possibly joining the two upper tiers in the coming years. Ram is committed to having five full-time trucks next year, with three drivers already announced and the all-star truck driver serving as its fourth. A fifth is likely to be part of a new reality show with Dana White<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Calling it its \u201cFree Agent Driver Program,\u201d Ram says it will have a driver with a unique history in racing take part in what it plans to be each race, but the truck maker says it won\u2019t announce the names until the Monday leading into race weekend. The brand is partnering with Kaulig Racing<\/a> as its team in NASCAR, and Ram already knows who is going to be the driver for the season opener at Daytona but isn\u2019t revealing it yet, Ram President Tim Kuniskis told SBJ on Monday.<\/p>\n

Kuniskis said this idea started percolating early on in Ram\u2019s discussions to rejoin the sport, a decision that it formally announced this past summer. Since Stellantis isn\u2019t back in NASCAR\u2019s top-tier premier series yet, Kuniskis said his aim with moves like this free-agent program is to attract fans who don\u2019t always tune into the third-tier Craftsman Truck Series but will do so next year because of the big names involved. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow can we leverage the Cup fans and try to get more Cup fans more engaged in Truck? And it\u2019s not that hard if you think about it because 50% of the people who are NASCAR fans drive a truck, so they naturally want to be there,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just want to make it more engaging for them. And the key to NASCAR has always been and always will be … that engagement to the team and the drivers. They\u2019re larger than life personalities, so how can we expand that?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New NASCAR entrant Ram will have an all-star truck next season filled by big names in motorsports as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-289475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-motorsports","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}