Alpha Prime Racing announced Ryan Ellis’s multi-year return on Oct. 15, 2026. (Image: Alpha Prime Racing)
Changing manufacturers is the riskiest thing a small NASCAR team can do short of selling the building. New chassis knowledge, new engine supplier, new support network, new data to learn, and the same sponsors expecting the same TV time. So when Alpha Prime Racing went looking for the first full-time driver of its Ford era, it skipped the gamble and called someone who already knows where the coffee maker is.
Ryan Ellis is going back to Alpha Prime on a multi-year deal that starts with the 2027 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season, the team announced on Oct. 15. He’ll drive a Ford Mustang with Roush Yates Engines power, and he brings Tablo TV with him as primary sponsor for at least 10 races. The car number hasn’t been announced.
On paper this is a reunion story. In practice it’s a risk-management move, and a pretty sensible one.
What’s confirmed
- Driver: Ryan Ellis, full-time, multi-year agreement beginning in 2027.
- Equipment: Ford Mustang, with engines from Roush Yates Engines, as Alpha Prime completes its switch from Chevrolet.
- Sponsor: Tablo TV, primary for a minimum of 10 races. Other 2027 partners are still to be announced.
- Not yet confirmed: Ellis’s car number and the team’s second full-time driver.
The Ford switch needed a known quantity
Alpha Prime announced on Sept. 5 that it would race Fords full time from 2027, framing the move as the result of an internal review of both its competition and business models. Co-owner Caesar Bacarella called it the largest decision the team has made. The plan was to convert existing cars and run Ford equipment during the back end of 2026, so the shop wouldn’t open the 2027 season learning a new platform from scratch.
That’s the right instinct, and Ellis fits the same logic. A driver new to the organization would have to learn the people, the processes and the car at the same time. Ellis only has to learn the car. He knows how founder Tommy Joe Martins and the crew communicate, how the team prepares, and where its limits are. In a year when engineers are rebuilding their baseline setups and sorting out a new engine package, removing one variable from the feedback loop is worth something.
Manufacturer changes rarely go to plan on the calendar they’re announced with; NASCAR’s approval process alone can set the pace, as the body-approval timeline hanging over a possible Dodge Cup return shows. For Alpha Prime, the clock that matters is shorter: the months between the end of 2026 and the 2027 season opener, when every shop hour spent learning a new car is an hour not spent finding speed.
The honest numbers
Nobody should pretend this is a signing built around results. Ellis has 193 starts in NASCAR’s second-tier series since his 2012 debut and two top-10 finishes, and both came recently: ninth at Charlotte in May 2025 with DGM Racing and sixth in the 2026 season opener at Daytona with Young’s Motorsports. Outside that Daytona run, his 2026 results have mostly landed in the 20s and 30s.
The more interesting stat is how his career is shaped. Across his first 11 seasons, from 2012 through 2022, Ellis made 67 starts. In the four seasons since, he’s made 126. That jump starts with Alpha Prime: after a partial schedule with the team in 2022, he helped launch its No. 43 program in 2023 and ran the full season in 2024. Martins summed up the team’s view in the release: “We’re signing a friend.” He also credited Ellis as the first person to back the program when it began in 2022.
Ellis’s statement was simpler: he is “incredibly excited to be back.”
The bar inside the shop is set by the man he’s replacing. Brennan Poole, who will leave Alpha Prime after 2026 after turning down an offer to return, had 95 starts, three top-fives and 11 top-10s across three seasons in the No. 44, all team records. Ellis doesn’t need to match that to make the deal work. He does need to stay on the lead lap more often than his recent seasons suggest, because a new manufacturer program needs clean data, and a car that loses the draft early gives the engineers very little to learn from.
Ten races paid for, and why that matters
The part of this deal that keeps the doors open is Tablo. The over-the-air streaming hardware company first sponsored Ellis at Alpha Prime in November 2024, his final race with the team that year, and stayed with him through his moves to DGM and Young’s. 2027 will be its fourth season with him. Team president Jusan Hamilton, the former NASCAR race director now running the business side of Alpha Prime, said in the release that Ellis brings experience, continuity and a strong commercial base into the Ford transition.
That’s the real trade-off for an independent team. At this level, a driver who brings a dependable sponsor relationship gives the team a funded starting point before the first lap of testing. Ten primary races is a meaningful anchor, but it’s not a full season. The rest of the schedule still needs funding, and how quickly Alpha Prime fills those gaps will say a lot about whether Ford’s arrival improves the team’s commercial pitch.
Ford’s broader NASCAR operation has its own reshuffling underway, with Brad Keselowski leaving RFK Racing as driver and executive. An independent O’Reilly team won’t drive Ford’s decisions, but its relationship with the manufacturer will matter when it comes to technical support and sharing information.
What to watch next
- The number. Poole’s No. 44 seat is open, and Ellis’s old No. 43 is part of the team’s history. The team hasn’t said which number Ellis will run.
- The second seat. Hamilton has described the team being built around two full-time O’Reilly cars. Ellis is the first full-time driver named for 2027. Whether the second seat goes to a sponsor-backed veteran or a development driver will show how the team is balancing budget and results.
- The late-2026 Fords. Any Ford starts Alpha Prime makes before the season ends are worth watching as early signs of the switch. They’re the team’s first real data, not a performance verdict.
- The rest of the silly season. The 2027 market is already moving at every level, from Corey Day’s charter-limited path to a Cup debut at Spire downward. Every O’Reilly seat that gets filled tightens the market for drivers who bring sponsorship.
Alpha Prime isn’t hiring Ellis to win races in 2027. It’s hiring him so the Ford project starts with a driver who knows the shop, a partner who covers part of the bill, and one less unknown. For a team betting its future on a new manufacturer, that’s a reasonable way to begin.
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