Photo: Casey Calhoun / Unsplash
Kasey Kahne is coming back to NASCAR full time. Spire Motorsports confirmed on Oct. 7 that the 46-year-old will drive its No. 77 Chevrolet Silverado RST for the full 2027 Truck Series season, starting with the Feb. 19 opener at Daytona. It will be his first full NASCAR season since health problems pushed him out of the Cup Series in 2018, and his first full season in trucks at any point in his career.
This is a real driver-market move, not a nostalgia one-off. Here is what Spire and Kahne have actually confirmed, and what it could mean for the truck field next year.
What is confirmed
- Team and truck: Spire Motorsports, No. 77 Chevrolet Silverado RST.
- Program: Full-time in the 2027 Truck Series, debuting at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 19.
- Announced: Oct. 7, 2026, by Spire Motorsports.
- Truck record: Five wins in six career Truck Series starts. The only race he did not win was a runner-up finish at Pocono in 2010. His last truck start came at Charlotte on May 15, 2015.
- Cup record: 18 wins in 529 starts, including the Coca-Cola 600 in 2006, 2008 and 2012 and the 2017 Brickyard 400.
- Most recent NASCAR start: April 2025 at Rockingham, where he finished 14th in Richard Childress Racing’s No. 33 in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series after being collected in an early crash while running fifth.
Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson called it “one of the coolest announcements we’ve been able to make.” According to RACER, Dickerson first raised the idea with Kahne at the Knoxville Nationals.
What has not been announced
Spire has not named a sponsor or a crew chief for the No. 77, and it has not said who else will drive for its truck program in 2027. Until those pieces land, any read on how competitive this entry will be is a projection, not a fact.
Why trucks, and why not Cup
Kahne stepped away from full-time racing in 2018 after severe dehydration, vision problems and an elevated heart rate made long Sunday races hard to get through. Speaking to RACER on Oct. 8, he said he does not expect to return to the Cup Series full time and that the truck schedule “makes way more sense with where I’m at.”
The format backs that up. The Truck Series runs 25 races, the longest of them 250 miles, on Friday and Saturday slots that do not fill every weekend. That leaves Kahne room to keep racing sprint cars on dirt with High Limit Racing and the World of Outlaws, which he never stopped doing after 2018. When he made his one-off Rockingham return in 2025, he credited his good health to not doing “the long races, the heat” every week.
Analysis: the competitive implications
Everything in this section is Backfire Racing’s read on the move, not something Spire or Kahne has said.
A veteran anchor for a rotating program. Spire’s truck effort has leaned on guest drivers and Cup regulars dropping down for selected races. A single full-time driver in the No. 77 gives the team continuity on feedback, setup development and owner points across all 25 rounds, which matters more in trucks than a headline name for a handful of races.
The win record is real but dated. Five wins from six starts is an absurd strike rate, but the last of those starts came more than a decade ago. Today’s trucks, tyres and the young field he will race against are all different. Kahne has stayed sharp on dirt, yet a full asphalt and road-course schedule is a separate test. The realistic early benchmark is regular top-10 pace on intermediates rather than an instant run of wins.
Fitness is the variable to watch. Kahne’s 2018 exit was driven by heat and endurance, not speed. Shorter races are the logic of this plan, but a full season still includes hot summer rounds. How he handles the first mid-summer stretch will tell us more than Daytona will.
It tightens an already busy market. One of the 2027 truck seats that might have gone to a development driver now belongs to a 46-year-old former Cup winner. For younger drivers hunting full-time rides, that is one fewer obvious landing spot at a winning Chevrolet team. For Spire, which has been in the headlines for its legal fight with Joe Gibbs Racing, it is a positive, marketable story heading into the off-season.
What happens next
Expect Spire to fill in the sponsor and crew chief details over the winter. Meanwhile the Cup title fight is still the main event this season; catch up on the Chase math after Las Vegas and on the wider 2027 shake-up, including Brad Keselowski’s exit from RFK.
Sources: Spire Motorsports announcement via NASCAR.com; RACER; RACER interview, Oct. 8.
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