The No. 25 Ram 1500 Stewart will drive at Talladega. (Image: Kaulig Racing/Ram)
Six days, three announcements. Dodge is coming back to the Cup Series with Kaulig Racing. Ryan Preece is moving to RFK Racing’s No. 6 Ford. And NASCAR is dumping its rainy-day qualifying formula in favor of plain owner points. One thread runs through them: in 2027, charters and owner points matter more than whose badge is on the fender. Dodge gets the headlines. Owner points will get the final say on a wet Saturday.
What is confirmed
Dodge made its return official on Nov. 2 at the SEMA Show, with a two-car Kaulig Racing team fielding Chargers, according to NASCAR 14 years after the brand left the series following 2012 and as the first new manufacturer since Toyota arrived in 2007. Kaulig’s lineup is AJ Allmendinger in the No. 16 and Ty Dillon in the No. 10, both confirmed on Nov. 6. RFK Racing named Preece to the No. 6 on Nov. 4, with his entire No. 60 team, crew chief Derrick Finley included, moving over with him. At Homestead, NASCAR’s John Probst said the starting order will revert to owner points alone when qualifying is canceled.
Dodge has the badge. It does not have the points history
Our first look at the return flagged how much was still missing, and the list has barely shrunk. Dodge and Kaulig have not revealed an engine configuration; Probst said only that it complies with the rule book. The body has cleared wind-tunnel testing, with production panels due in mid-November, and the race car is scheduled to be shown on Dec. 4 at the Snowball Derby. Probst described the body-approval process as the same one every manufacturer follows, which typically takes about 18 months of CFD and wind-tunnel work, and the 69th Daytona 500 is on Feb. 21. (We laid out why that calendar was tight before Dodge made it official.)
Then there is the sporting reality Kaulig is inheriting. Going into Homestead weekend, Allmendinger ranked 25th in the Cup standings and Dillon 34th. Allmendinger has delivered both of Kaulig’s Cup wins since the team arrived in 2020. That is a respectable organization with a new badge and a new set of problems, not a front-runner. Allmendinger said himself that next year will bring a different set of struggles. Kaulig CEO Chris Rice also said the team would love a third Dodge at Daytona, but that there are stipulations to work through with Dodge and Matt Kaulig, and that he has not spoken to Brad Keselowski, who is leaving RFK. Keselowski won the 2012 title in a Dodge and gave the brand its most recent Cup win, at Dover that fall.
RFK’s move is a charter story in a No. 6 jacket
The headline is sentimental: Preece becomes the sixth full-time driver of the No. 6 that Jack Roush and Mark Martin made famous. The structure underneath is more interesting. RFK runs three charters in 2026, and one of them transfers to Legacy Motor Club in 2027. The No. 6 stays chartered. So the arithmetic leaves the number Preece just won in, the No. 60, as the open question, and RFK has only said details will come later.
My read: RFK is not buying a new driver so much as keeping the unit that just won. Preece took his first Cup victory at Daytona in August, and rather than split that team up, the organization is moving it, crew chief and all, into the seat its co-owner is vacating. That is a team choosing continuity over a splashy replacement while it shrinks from three charters to two. It is a sensible call, and a revealing one about where RFK’s resources are going.
The rain rule is the sleeper
The old qualifying metric weighed 70% previous-race finish and 30% owner-points position, according to NASCAR’s own breakdown. It became a problem when rain kept hitting the Chase. At Darlington, six of the 16 championship drivers started 20th or worse, including Ryan Blaney in 24th and Kyle Larson in 25th, off the back of a chaotic Daytona finish the week before. The metric, in effect, let one bad Sunday decide the next Sunday’s grid (our Las Vegas qualifying-order piece showed the knock-on effect). NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell has since said the formula dated to the COVID era and that few people had paid attention to it until the rain arrived.
Owner points fix that, and I think the fix is right. A season-long number is harder to wreck with one bad finish, and Joey Logano’s defense of the old system, that it rewards running well, is a fair counterpoint rather than a wrong one. But owner points are slow. They reward the entries that have been good for the longest, and they do not care that a team just changed manufacturers, drivers or numbers.
That is where the three stories meet. Kaulig’s two Dodges, RFK’s reshuffled Fords and Legacy’s incoming charter are all the kind of entries that could be stuck with less history than their ambitions deserve. What I could not find in NASCAR’s public explanations is how the rule behaves in the opening weeks of 2027, before many 2027 owner points exist, or how points follow an entry that changes numbers. Those are rule-book footnotes today. If it rains at the wrong track in February or March, they become starting positions. (The Chase fallout behind all this is in our standings breakdown.)
What to watch next
First, Dodge’s engine announcement and the Dec. 4 car reveal, which will show how much of the Daytona gap has been closed. Second, RFK’s decision on the No. 60. Third, whether Kaulig finds the stipulations it needs for a third Dodge, and whether Keselowski is part of that conversation. And fourth, the first rainout of 2027, which will test how simple “simple” really is.
Owner points for rainouts: fair reward for a full season, or a free pass for last year’s good teams?
Lead image: Kaulig Racing/Ram.
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