Daniel Dye will drive the No. 10 car in the Xfinity Series for Kaulig Racing, alongside Josh Williams and a to-be-announced third driver, the team announced at Daytona on Friday at midday.
The move comes a week after the team announced that current Xfinity driver AJ Allmendinger will make the move to the Cup Series next season. It also comes during a rebuilding period for the team: after several years as a dominant force in NASCAR’s second-tier series, the team’s only wins this season have come from Shane van Gisbergen, who’s running in equipment prepared by Trackhouse, not Kaulig.
That means Dye, who currently competes in the Truck Series where he’s chasing his first win, will have to be prepared to help grow a program and develop the team. However, the young 20-year-old is prepared to take on the role, having already made seven starts for Kaulig in the Xfinity Series this year.
“Yeah, I’m pumped,” Dye said. “I think I’m going to be a good piece of the progress for Kaulig, I feel like I’ve been a little bit of a help getting the cars better this year. Obviously we still have a lot of work to do to get back to running well in races every weekend and having that capability.”
In fact, it was veteran driver Allmendinger who recommended that Dye get the seat, which the soft-spoken young driver called ‘very cool.’
Team owner Chris Rice emphasized that all of the recent lineup changes are part of an overall rebuilding effort for both the team’s Cup and Xfinity programs. The Xfinity Series remains the team’s focus, he stressed, but having a Cup program is integral to attract talented young prospects who see their chance to advance to NASCAR’s premier series with Kaulig.
“Our Xfinity program is where we truly are, we know that. And that’s what made us step back down, because we weren’t trophy-hunting,” Rice said. “We knew the only way we were going to get these young gentlemen to come and race with us was for them to race. We were not going to be able to get anybody and we knew that, so we had to go to AJ and say this is what we’ve got to do, and he agreed.
“We didn’t have the partners we needed in 2024 for him to run full-time, so we know that going back, getting the partners, getting more engineers, that is where it’s at, and everybody knows that AJ’s going to run full-time and the next guy’s going to run full-time.”
Keeping up a Cup program comes with plenty of operational challenges, though.
“We’ve been in business nine years and we’ve won two Cup races and 26 Xfinity races, we’re pretty proud of that, but we know where we belong. But one day, hopefully Matt is the one they’re talking about, somebody standing here in my spot, that they don’t belong where he’s at.”
A new alliance with Richard Childress Racing should help the Cup program grow stronger, Rice said, and make it a more enticing prospect for young drivers. Though RCR has had its own struggles this season, with Kyle Busch winless, the team finally broke through to win with Austin Dillon at Richmond and has shown more speed since.
Plus, “we know that when AJ gets into the Cup cars, he’s going to make them better for sure,” Rice emphasized.
As for the rest of the lineup in both Cup and Xfinity, that will be announced in the coming months. Rice said that the Xfinity lineup is wrapped up with another announcement to come shortly, while Cup is more complicated and all hinges on sponsors.
“The Cup program is really, really close,” Rice said. “It’s not signed or anything, but it all boils back down to where the partners land, that’s what’s so bad about it.”
Whatever the final lineup, from Rice’s perspective it will have to be one that benefits Kaulig in the long term. He repeatedly emphasized the ‘family’ aspect at Kaulig – for now, at least, each driver who gets signed will have to carry the load to make the whole family better.
