Kaulig Racing is putting pieces in place as the end of the 2025 season approaches. The end of an alliance will put the team in a situation where it is on its own in multiple NASCAR series.
Team CEO Chris Rice provided the update on Wednesday during a weekly appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. He noted that the team continues to hire employees while building a Truck Series program from scratch. The team also continues to work toward a future when it can no longer use information from Richard Childress Racing.
Rice did not explicitly say if this alliance will end after the 2025 season or the 2026 season. FanBuzz reached out to Kaulig Racing and will update the story based on the response.
This will mark a major change for Kaulig Racing considering that the team has its shops at one end of the RCR campus in Welcome, North Carolina.
“We’re hiring left and right,” Rice said. “I think over the last three weeks, we’ve had about 10 people start and we’ve had a lot of engineers start because not only building five trucks, we’re going to be out on our own on Cup. We’re not going to be able to alliance with RCR and do those things, so we’re going to kind of be out on our own on that.
“So we’re building our own Cup program, building our own bodies and different things like that. And hey, Matt Kaulig always told me, ‘Man, let’s go stand on our own two feet for the next 10 years. That’d be 20 years in the sport.”
Why would this alliance end? Kaulig Racing has worked with Richard Childress Racing for multiple seasons now while the two teams have focused on a “One Welcome” mindset.
The 2026 season marks a significant change. Kaulig Racing will become the flagship team for Ram as the OEM returns to stock car racing. Kaulig Racing will field five trucks while taking on the third-tier series for the first time in team history.
When Kaulig Racing announced its partnership with Ram, it noted that it would keep its Xfinity and Cup Series programs separate from the Truck Series program. This way, it could continue to field Chevrolets in Xfinity and Cup while fielding Rams in Truck.
“As we go through this, there will be firewalls up to make sure that we protect Ram and our Cup and Xfinity programs,” Rice said in Daytona in September. “It’s still Matt’s teams but it’s out of respect for everyone who has believed in us and our new partners that believed in us and we’re going to keep it that way for a long time.
“We always get the questions about ‘what is next’ and this is next for a long time, right now, just getting this in the position to win races and be in contention for the playoffs.”
However, the possibility exists that Kaulig Racing could ultimately become the flagship Dodge team when Stellantis makes its return to the Cup Series. The OEM partner has already expressed a desire to get back to the top level of NASCAR, and NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell has openly acknowledged this when discussing horsepower packages.
The onboarding timeline for a new team is about 18 months, so the earliest Dodge could return to the Cup Series would be the 2027 season. At this point, Kaulig Racing could potentially become the flagship team.