Kaulig Racing and Ram announced Tony Stewart as the No. 25 Free Agent driver for Talladega. (Image: Kaulig Racing/Ram)
Tony Stewart’s first NASCAR national-series race since 2016 lasted 36 laps, and he didn’t do anything to earn the early exit. Now Kaulig Racing and Ram are giving him the rematch: Stewart will drive the No. 25 Ram 1500 in the Craftsman Truck Series race at Talladega Superspeedway on Friday, Oct. 23 (4 p.m. ET, FS1), his second Truck start of 2026.
The venue is the interesting part. If you had one late-season start to hand a 55-year-old three-time Cup champion who hasn’t raced a truck since February, Talladega is about the most forgiving place on the calendar to do it — and also the place most likely to hand the result to somebody else’s mistake. Ask Stewart how that works out.
Daytona, briefly
Stewart opened Ram’s return to NASCAR in the February season opener at Daytona. On Lap 36 of 100, Jake Garcia’s No. 98 Ford broke loose off Turn 4 and hooked Stewart’s Ram into the wall, damaging the suspension and both sides of the truck. He was classified 36th. Before the hit, he hadn’t made a run toward the front and was still adjusting the truck’s balance — though his own read was blunt: “We definitely were gaining.”
He also left the door open afterward, saying there was “a pretty good shot” he’d be back. Seven months later, here we are.
Why a drafting track suits a one-off driver
A guest driver’s biggest handicap at most tracks is time: no reps in the truck, no feel for how it reacts over a run, and a crew chief tuning around a stranger’s feedback. At a short track or road course, that gap shows up in lap time immediately.
Superspeedways shrink it. With the field running in a pack, raw speed matters less than reading the draft, picking which lane is about to move and deciding when to commit to a run. That is experience, not practice laps, and Stewart has plenty of it at this track: 35 Cup starts at Talladega, a win in October 2008, nine top fives and 14 top 10s. His Truck résumé is short but efficient, with two wins from a handful of cameo starts in 2002 and 2003.
The catch is that experience doesn’t make you crash-proof. Daytona proved a veteran can do everything right and still get collected. Talladega runs the same lottery with more tickets.
The Ram factor: a small team in a big pack
There’s also a manufacturer wrinkle. Ram’s entire Truck Series presence runs through Kaulig’s five-truck operation, which the team built from scratch after the Ram deal was signed in the summer of 2025. On a drafting track, friends matter: drivers from the same brand tend to work together when the pack sorts itself out, and a manufacturer with five trucks has fewer natural allies than rivals with deeper benches. How well Stewart can link up with the other Kaulig Rams — and whether they can hold a line together late — is worth watching more closely than his qualifying spot.
Speaking of qualifying: there is no safety net this time. For the first three races of 2026 — Daytona, EchoPark Speedway and St. Petersburg — NASCAR held up to four extra OEM provisional spots so a Ram that missed the 36-truck field on speed could start at the rear. That grace period is over, as we covered when Elliott Sadler’s No. 25 start at Richmond ran into a crowded entry list. Talladega runs under the standard rules.
The Free Agent truck is a marketing program — and it’s working
Nobody should pretend the No. 25 exists purely to chase owner points. The Free Agent seat is Ram’s rotating showcase, and the lineup reads like a fan-vote ballot: Stewart, Jamie McMurray, Ty Dillon, Ryan Newman, Conor Daly, Corey LaJoie, Travis Pastrana, Parker Kligerman, Clint Bowyer, A.J. Allmendinger, Carson Ferguson, Elliott Sadler and Colin Braun.
Ram and Kaulig say the numbers back up the approach: the Daytona opener drew 1.387 million viewers on FS1, a 37 percent jump over the 2025 season opener, with a peak above 1.6 million. Bringing the program’s opening act back for a marquee superspeedway date in October is a way of bookending the brand’s first season with its biggest name. Tim Kuniskis, head of American brands at Stellantis, called it a move that “brings incredible energy.” Stewart, for his part: “Anytime you can get into a Ram truck and go racing at a place like Talladega, you jump at it.”
It also fits the bigger Stellantis picture. The Truck program is the foothold, and the company’s conversations about a return to the Cup Series are still wrestling with the hard part — see our look at why Dodge’s 2027 Cup ambitions still face tough engine math. Every eyeball the Free Agent truck pulls strengthens the business case upstream.
How the drag racing schedule makes room
Stewart’s day job in 2026 is a Top Fuel dragster with Elite Motorsports, and the NHRA calendar is what makes Talladega possible. The Texas NHRA FallNationals in Ennis runs earlier in October, and the Mopar NHRA Las Vegas Nationals doesn’t start until Oct. 29. The Oct. 23 Talladega date drops into the gap. His drag racing operation is already reshaping for next season, too, as we detailed in Tony Stewart Racing’s 2027 Top Fuel plans.
What to watch on Oct. 23
- Qualifying: With no OEM provisional available, the No. 25 has to get into a 36-truck field under standard procedure.
- Ram teamwork: Whether Kaulig’s trucks find each other in the draft, or get split across lanes by the bigger manufacturer blocs.
- Stage-end positioning: A one-off entry has nothing to protect in points, so Stewart can afford to be aggressive in the closing laps of each stage.
- The final restart: Pack racing tends to reshuffle the order in the final laps, which is exactly where a veteran’s read of the draft is worth more than seat time.
The realistic goal isn’t complicated. Make the field, stay out of other people’s messes and be in the lead draft when the white flag flies. After Daytona, just seeing the checkered flag would count as progress.
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