By Jerry Jordan, Editor
Dodge is coming back to the NASCAR Cup Series.
“Everyone said it was impossible to get back in one year. We said, ‘watch this,’” said Tim Kuniskis, the head of American brands for Stellantis North America, during a presentation at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas.
Stellantis announced Monday at the SEMA Show that the Dodge Charger will return to NASCAR’s top series in 2027 with Kaulig Racing as its anchor team. The move ends a 14-season absence from the sport when a Dodge drove away with the Cup Series Championship and left the sport. For the first time since 2012, the Cup Series will have four manufacturers on the track.
Kaulig Racing, which hadn’t even been formed the last time Dodge was in the Cup Series, will field a two-car Dodge team beginning with the Daytona 500. The move completes a two-step return that began on June 8, 2025, when Ram announced it would return to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at the beginning of this season.
Dodge SRT Racing will lead the effort.
“Sure, we could spend three years planning, testing and perfecting … or we could do all three in real time, on the track. It’s going to be exponentially harder this way,” Kuniskis said. “But slow has never been part of Dodge DNA. LFG.”
John Probst, president of NASCAR Event Management, repeated the praise Monday night during a media call after the announcement and he put Kuniskis at the center of it.
“Tim is probably one of the biggest supporters we have. You can see it in, you know, all his actions and his words. He’s a great partner. The whole company is a great partner,” Probst said.
Probst said Kuniskis came over to him after the announcement and the two men laughed about the one-year promise.
“After Tim’s comments tonight, he came over to me and said, ‘Oh, I hope I didn’t make you too nervous.’ And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘That’s good, you should push us.’ And he has certainly done that,” Probst said. “We certainly were appreciative of how aggressive they were at trying to shrink that timeline and honestly we did as much as we could on our side to help them do that. I mean, we didn’t change any rules or anything like that to do it, but certainly any influence we had, we wanted to help them bring their vision to life.”
NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell welcomed the announcement, stating, “Dodge’s return to the NASCAR Cup Series is a significant milestone for the sport and a powerful vote of confidence in what we’re building together. This commitment speaks to Dodge’s belief in our sport and gives fans another reason to be excited about what’s ahead. This partnership between Tim Kuniskis and the entire team at Stellantis has been nothing short of phenomenal. They have a deep passion for NASCAR and its ability to showcase the world’s top brands, and we can’t wait to see Dodge on the racetrack for the Daytona 500 and beyond.”
For NASCAR, the announcement closed a search that has run since Dodge left. Probst said the sanctioning body has faced the media for years saying it was talking with other manufacturers and he felt the pressure to land one.
“We’ve sat in front of this same group for a number of years saying that we are out talking to other OEMs. There’s a lot of OEM interest in our sport and I’ve always felt the pressure to try and deliver one,” he said, of himself, O’Donnell and NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Ben Kennedy. “It’s been a lot of trips to Detroit, you know, with Steve O’Donnell, Ben Kennedy, myself, trying to, you know, talk to all these OEMs and show them the strength of our sport. Once an OEM makes the decision to get in, it really doesn’t have to take that long until they’re on the racetrack. So, you know, I hope this is encouragement for some of the others that may be still looking.”
The return is arriving a year earlier than expected and it likely took a little help from a rival camp to pull it off. Dodge had been working toward a 2028 Cup Series debut but accelerated the plan by aligning with ECR Engines, the Richard Childress Racing-owned engine shop that builds engines for Chevrolet teams, according to reports last month in the Sports Business Journal. The arrangement is expected to be a short-term bridge while the company develops a long-term engine plan and the existing manufacturers sign off on it.
A Nose and a Tail in the Truck Series, the Whole Car in the Cup Series
Probst told Kickin’ the Tires the Ram truck program and the Cup program were two very different undertakings, even with Kaulig Racing running both but that the two were very much simultaneous behind the scenes.
“So the truck is obviously, I won’t say an easier commitment because they’re all important commitments, but from a lift perspective with the truck, you’re just doing a nose, some fenders and a tail. When you’re doing the Cup car, you’re doing the whole thing,” Probst said. “I will say that as they’re doing the truck, we are obviously having conversations with them about coming to Cup and wanting them to come to Cup. So there’s starts and stops along the way when you do that, but, you know, once the commitment was made to come back, everything went pretty quickly.”
The Next Gen car lowered the barrier for a new manufacturer. The chassis and the underbody are common components, so a new OEM does not have to develop them and the work concentrates on the body. Probst said the approval process leans on simulation and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) more than it once did and the final gate has not changed.
“It does come down to that wind tunnel test, and, you know, you making sure that you fit in the box,” he said. “We did add the step with the new car that your production panels have to fit inside the box.”
The normal approval process runs about 18 months from the wind tunnel deadline in July of the year before a debut. Probst said this one combined milestones after an early submission went quiet and then picked up steam. The production panels are due in a little under two weeks.
“This was done about as fast as we can do it once they decided to go,” Probst said.
The Engine Is Legal and the Next One Is Already on the Clock
Probst would not discuss the ECR arrangement in detail but he said the engine it will race is legal under the current rulebook and more announcements are coming during the offseason. The current engine formula has a long runway and that runway is part of what made the one-year timeline possible. NASCAR has already started meeting with the manufacturers about the next engine and Probst said the sport is in no hurry to force a change.
“What I’d say on the engine front is that the engine that they will run is compliant with our rulebook, and I’ll kind of leave the rest of that, you know, for them,” Probst said. “Per our agreement with the teams, the minimum runway would be two years. I would say that we’re not likely to ever do it in two years. We’re targeting anywhere from 2030 to 2032.”
“If we would’ve rushed in a few years ago, we’d add a big hybrid component to the car,” Probst said. “You could easily land in some form of combined hybrid model where some percentage of common and some percentage of OEM specific.”
Probst said the manufacturers and the sanctioning body are now weighing just how much electrification belongs in the next formula before they commit to it. The decisions have to come in the first quarter of next year so the engine builders and the OEMs have time to develop what follows.
He added that NASCAR did not have to sell the brand on the current naturally aspirated V8 and the fit worked the other way. The sanctioning body tries to reflect what its manufacturers sell in showrooms and what the brand wanted most was a race car that looks like the cars on its dealers’ floors.
“We didn’t play that up. We try to reflect, you know, what it is our OEMs are putting in the showrooms. The naturally aspirated V8 is a good solution for a lot of them and it kind of just organically worked. It wasn’t anything forced from our side,” Probst said. “I think a lot of it, and this is, I think, a strength of the Next Gen car, is that brand identity, that, you know, the brand that they bring out will be very reflective of the brand, you know, from the body styling that they sell on the showroom.”
The Associated Press reported AJ Allmendinger and Ty Dillon are expected to fill the two seats when Kaulig moves over from Chevrolet but the team is not confirming its lineup yet. Kaulig Racing said it will announce its 2027 driver lineup during Championship Weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The timing sets up an interesting question for this weekend’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway as Brad Keselowski previously drove for Dodge and is leaving RFK behind at the end of the season. It was Keselowski who delivered Dodge’s last Cup Series championship in 2012 and he said he has no ride lined up yet for 2027.
Both sides have already been asked about Keselowski and Kaulig Racing president Chris Rice said last month the team has had no conversations with Keselowski about a Dodge ride. It wasn’t until this past weekend that Keselowski was released from restrictions that kept him from formally seeking out a new ride.
During a press conference at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday, Keselowski said, “I have not had a meaningful discussion with Dodge or Ram.”
Any other team that wants to run a Dodge will have to bring its own charter. Probst said NASCAR is not creating charters to help the brand grow beyond Kaulig Racing and the goal is to grow the number of factory-backed organizations instead.
“I will say though that in this case, we are not intending to create any new charters in our Cup Series. So I would say in this case, there’s no real consideration for that right now,” Probst said. “Our approach towards bringing OEMs into our sport is to create as many tier one teams as we can. I think that the racing from top to bottom now in our sport is as strong as it’s ever been and the way we make that stronger is to bring in more OEMs.”
The brand’s history in the sport runs deep. The brand scored its first Cup Series win in 1953 and its final season ended with a championship for the No. 2 Blue Deuce Dodge Charger in 2012 before Team Penske moved to Ford and the manufacturer stepped away. That move came right after Dodge unveiled what was supposed to be its 2013 car design during an event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
This is not the first time Dodge has stood at this door. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) CEO Sergio Marchionne started talking publicly about a return in December 2016, telling reporters he had talked with Jim France the night before and admitting he was the man who pulled Dodge out of the sport in the first place.
“I think it is possible we can come back to NASCAR,” Marchionne said at the time. “I think we need to find the right way to come back in.”
The talks were real. Kickin’ the Tires first reported in August 2017 that, despite published reports that the program had been killed, FCA was still researching a return and still in talks with NASCAR, with 2019 the earliest realistic target. The article quoted several high-level sources who were part of a secret meeting with NASCAR officials at Michigan International Speedway on the day the story was first published.
Marchionne died in July 2018 at 66, less than a year later, from complications following shoulder surgery. The return lost the only champion Dodge had at the top of the company for a NASCAR return and the idea went dormant for the better part of a decade.
Then Ram announced it would return to the Truck Series with Kaulig Racing this season, reopening the door.
The brand is cleared to test as soon as it has a car to test. Probst said the manufacturer is eligible for Goodyear tests and wheel force transducer tests right now and the holdup is bodywork.
“They would need body work. It would have to be a Dodge body on that car,” Probst said. “There are no body panels as of this moment in time. They’re in process. We would expect them in the next few weeks, but they are approved to go to wheel force and Goodyear tests.”
The body itself has cleared the hard part. The prototype panels fit the performance box in the wind tunnel and Probst called the coming check of the production panels a formality. Probst said the next step is basically a formality and there have not been any significant issues where an OEM passes the wind tunnel test and then fails with the production panels.
Whether a new manufacturer gets extra tests of its own is still an open question. The 2027 rulebook is supposed to be released on Nov. 15 and Probst said the topic will be part of the offseason conversations.
“Right now our rulebook does not have that in it,” he said. “We will have conversations here in the offseason. November 15th is the launch date for the rules for 2027. We’ll obviously have some discussions around new manufacturer tests and things of that nature, but nothing to announce tonight,” Probst said.
The first Dodge on track in a Cup Series event may not wait for Daytona. The Clash opens the season two weeks before the Daytona 500 and Probst said NASCAR is working on a way to include the new brand, even though Kaulig Racing will have little time to build cars once the production panels arrive.
Probst also warned against expecting the new team to contend competitively right away and he said the brand is not expecting it either. The Next Gen platform was built for teams to learn in public and the fans will watch this one learn the same way.
“It’s not often that we welcome a new OEM into our sport. I think that we’ll more than likely find a way to have a Dodge in the Clash,” Probst said. “They’re going to be learning in front of our fans and that should be a good show. That should be good for their customers, good for our fan base. I give them credit for being bold and taking the risk. They know that it’s going to be hard. They’re not under any illusion that they’ve got a mountain to climb, but, you know, like Tim and that whole crew, like they will climb it.”
“I’m certainly not going to make any bold blanket claims of when they’re going to have success because that’ll just create a bunch of conspiracy theories,” Probst joked. “I think success for us is having them in the sport and competing.”
With Ram in the Truck Series and Dodge back in the Cup Series, Kaulig Racing now stands as the factory home for both Stellantis brands. There has been no significant chatter about other teams joining the Dodge camp but there is the wild card with Keselowski’s plans for 2027. After all, he did drive for Dodge and he fielded a truck series team with them as well.
Fans will not have to wait long to see the car. Dodge will reveal the body design that will carry its livery in Cup Series competition at the Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, on Dec. 4, where celebrity drivers will race equally prepared Dodge Charger late models in the Dodge Sno-Brawl. The reveal will be livestreamed on FloRacing and the NASCAR Channel.