Dodge is coming back to the NASCAR Cup Series for 2027, ending a 14-year absence that began when the brand left after the 2012 season. Carscoops reported on November 2 that Dodge will field a two-car team with Kaulig Racing and make its on-track debut in February during Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway. It will be the first new manufacturer in the series since Toyota arrived in 2007.
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The brand plans to name its driver lineup at this weekend’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and a new racing car is scheduled for a December reveal. Dodge would rejoin Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota, restoring a four-make field.
Kaulig Racing, a two-car team and a February debut
According to Carscoops, the program carries the Dodge SRT Racing name and is the latest step in a performance revival led by Tim Kuniskis, who runs SRT Performance and Direct Connection in the United States. Kuniskis said everyone had called it impossible to get back in within a year, and that slow has never been part of Dodge DNA, closing with the rallying cry LFG. NASCAR’s Event Management president, John Probst, said the sanctioning body had discussed a Dodge return for a long time and called it a proud moment to welcome the brand back.
The partner is familiar. Kaulig Racing became the anchor team for Ram’s Craftsman Truck Series comeback in a deal announced on August 23, 2025, with up to five Ram 1500 entries starting at Daytona on February 13 and a Kaulig owner who called the tie-up a union of shared values. That arrangement marked the first factory-supported Ram effort since 2012, and the Cup deal extends the same relationship upward.
What Dodge left behind in 2012
Dodge last competed in the Cup Series in 2012, the year Brad Keselowski won the championship in one of its cars. Carscoops credits the brand with 57 victories between 2001 and 2012 and 217 Cup wins overall. The brand first returned to NASCAR competition through the truck ranks, where Stellantis entered the Craftsman Truck Series this year, and has now committed to a full factory-backed Cup effort.
NASCAR’s own site recorded the first step of the current push, describing the Ram return to competition as having its first affiliated team in Kaulig Racing. The Cup program builds directly on that truck-series footprint.
The charter system shapes the plan. Mopar Insiders reported that Kaulig holds two Cup charters and that NASCAR was not expected to expand the 36-charter field to 40, which would explain why Dodge enters with exactly two cars rather than a larger operation. A two-car program also keeps the engineering burden manageable for a manufacturer rebuilding a competition department from scratch, with only a single winter to prepare racing cars, engines and pit crews for Speedweeks.
Engine questions and the road to the Daytona 500
Before the formal announcement, reporting had run well ahead of confirmation. Motor1 relayed an account from The Athletic, citing multiple people briefed on the situation, that Dodge should race in the Daytona 500 on February 21, 2027, with Kaulig fielding the entries. That report also said Dodge was working with ECR Engines, owned by Richard Childress Racing, which fields Chevrolets. A Chevrolet design could not simply be rebadged, so ECR would need to build a distinct engine, according to Motor1’s summary, and without that progress the debut would probably have slipped to 2028.
Mopar Insiders, drawing on The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi, said the proposed Charger Cup body had already completed initial wind tunnel testing and that Kaulig, which holds two charters, would be the flagship team. It reported in earlier coverage that the 2027 Daytona 500 target had moved closer to reality. No official Stellantis statement was cited in that piece, so the confirmation now rests on the Carscoops account of the announcement.
The December reveal and the open driver question
The Keselowski connection gives the comeback a ready-made storyline. Keselowski won the 2012 championship for Dodge, and but none of the reporting reached for this article names any driver for the new team. That makes the lineup the last major unknown before the opener, and the Carscoops report leaves it for the Miami weekend.
The new racing car will be shown on December 4 at the Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Florida, with a livestream on FloRacing and the NASCAR Channel. The Carscoops report does not name the model, describing it only as an all-new racing car, although Mopar Insiders had pointed to a Charger body.
Two seats, no announced drivers and a first race roughly three months away leave a compressed timetable. Kuniskis is betting that a program assembled in a single year can compete at Daytona, and the lineup due this weekend in Miami will be the first concrete test of that claim. Whether the cars are quick enough to qualify and run competitively against three established manufacturers is a question only February can answer.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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