Matt Kaulig ready to go full-time Cup racing in 2022

By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer

After Matt Kaulig sponsored a car in the Xfinity Series in 2015, the former college quarterback and entrepreneur couldn’t get a thought out of his mind.

"You start to spend millions of dollars on sponsorship, and you start to say, ‘Well, I am spending this much money on sponsorship, how much does it cost to start a team or own a team?'" Kaulig said. "How much could it possibly cost?" 

Kaulig soon learned that the costs are extensive but definitely worth it for someone who has a competitive streak and the desire to control a little bit how the product is presented and how it performs.

He started fielding a car in the Xfinity Series in 2016, and that expanded to two cars in 2019. He entered the Daytona 500 in 2020 to go with the Xfinity cars. That turned into three cars in 2021 along with entering nine Cup races.

In June 2021, Kaulig announced that he had purchased two charters from Spire Motorsports and would expand into a two-car Cup operation. He will still have three Xfinity cars.

He brings to the Cup Series a "trophy hunting" attitude, as well as the humility of someone who knows that it wasn’t until 2020 that one of his drivers became a championship contender.

One of two new owners in Cup this year (along with Maury Gallagher, who purchased Petty Enterprises in forming Petty GMS Motorsports), Kaulig will try to keep his expectations for 2022 in check. 

"We don’t really have expectations, which I think is a good thing," he said. "It keeps it light. It keeps it having less pressure."

As a former QB at the University of Akron, Kaulig knows the don’t-forget-to-have-fun culture he wants for his team. As a successful businessman in the direct-to-consumer market with his LeafFilter brands, Kaulig understands the fiscal responsibility his team must have to meet its budgets.

He hired Chris Rice as a crew chief and general manager when he started building the team. Rice, who grew up going to the short-track South Boston (Virginia) Speedway that his mother managed for decades, has worked in virtually every job in the sport except driver. He also has a strong personality and is known for his enthusiasm and intensity — with a smile.

"Sometimes in business, you need people who know how to do everybody on the team’s job better than they do," Kaulig said. "That’s what Chris Rice does."

What Rice also does is try to be honest with Kaulig, explaining how every dollar is spent and how it will help the team. Rice said he is the one — not Kaulig — who tells his crew chiefs that they can’t have a new or experimental part or piece because the GM is not convinced it is worth the cost.

That allows Kaulig to just relate to team members, especially drivers. In just six years, he has gone from being one of those sponsor executives hanging out to being a successful race team owner with 15 NASCAR wins.

"He loves the camaraderie of all the men and women at Kaulig Racing," driver AJ Allmendinger said. "He didn’t have an initial passion for motorsports. He’s made that very clear in his life. He’s a great businessman. He’s into sports.

"He comes to the shop a lot. He makes sure he’s a part of everything that we do. More importantly, it’s just fun for him."

Allmendinger has contributed to that fun, especially last August when he drove to victory in the first Cup race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. A few years earlier, few would have predicted that result for Allmendinger or Kaulig.

Allmendinger was left without a ride after the 2018 Cup season, and he appeared more at the racetrack in a TV role for NBC Sports than as a driver in 2019. But as Kaulig's Xfinity teams struggled to find consistent top-10 finishes, the owner was looking for a way to win trophies and knew that road courses could offer a better chance for success.

"We went to try to find the best road-courses racer we could, and lo and behold, AJ Allmendinger was available," Kaulig said. "AJ has been extremely great for us. Not only does he win trophies for us, but he’s a really great mentor for our younger drivers. He teaches them a lot."

He can teach them because he has been through a lot. A former open-wheel driver who was successful in CART, Allmendinger struggled when he entered Cup with very limited stock-car experience while driving for the new Red Bull Racing team in 2007. He spent a few years driving for Richard Petty Motorsports and then seemed to have his career trajectory set driving for Team Penske in 2012.

But Allmendinger found himself out of a ride after he took a pill that he said he didn’t realize was Adderall and failed a NASCAR drug test midway through his first Penske season.

Penske helped Allmendinger rejuvenate his career with select Xfinity and IndyCar starts, and Allmendinger eventually landed at JTG Daugherty Racing. But after four top-5s in a four-year span, he appeared drained and unlikely to race full-time again.

Until he got the call from Kaulig. 

Allmendinger was just what Kaulig's team needed, and he went from a partial schedule in 2020 to a full-time Xfinity schedule in 2021. This year, he will drive part-time in Cup while also trying to win an Xfinity title following a year in which he took the regular-season 2021 Xfinity trophy.

"Everybody just said the sport has kind of chewed him up and spit him out a little bit, and he has had some trouble, and people have had trouble with him," Kaulig said. "But he’s been nothing but a great leader, a great race-car driver."

Kaulig doesn’t just have Allmendinger to challenge for the Xfinity title. He also has Daniel Hemric, who won the title last season driving for Joe Gibbs Racing. With Landon Cassill joining the organization, Kaulig seems to salivate at the chance of winning that title.

Also this year, Justin Haley, who has driven in Xfinity for the team the past three years, will move into one of Kaulig’s full-time Cup cars. The second car will have a trio of drivers with Allmendinger, Hemric and Noah Gragson.

"Matt started his race team small, like he did his business, and only put as much into each step that is reasonably possible," Haley said. "It took a while for Kaulig Racing to start gaining traction [in Xfinity]. I think we’re going to see the same thing in Cup."

That is the way Kaulig views the addition of racing every Sunday in Cup.

"If we came into this thing like, ‘Hey we need to make the playoffs, we need to win races’ — we don’t need to do anything," Kaulig said. "We’re just there to grow the sport, to have fun in the sport, to do great with our sponsors and our partners, get our race-car drivers more experience, get them up and running, and then put ourselves in a position to have a chance to win sometimes.

"If we do, great. If we don’t, we gave it our best."

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Thinking out loud

The change of the Martinsville spring race from 500 laps to 400 laps certainly caused a stir on Twitter. NASCAR got the decision right, but the timing of the announcement was wrong.

Many believe that the shortest track (0.526-mile oval) on the circuit produces the best racing. But attendance hasn’t followed that; this track, like all tracks, has had to take out seats over the past several years to be even close to capacity, despite being in the heart of the sport’s Southeastern base.

The 500-lap Martinsville races often take at least three-and-a-half hours when including a red flag, which can occur if an accident blocks the track. The Next Gen car could be a little slower, at 670 horsepower, which means the races could be even longer. It’s not rare for the race to drag over a 200-lap run.

A 400-lap race, which likely will be two-and-a-half or three hours, should be fine and create more urgency on a short track. Frankly, this would be the right move whether the race were going to be in the day or at night. The fact that it’s a night race means the move makes even more sense, as fans at home can watch from start to finish without being up all night.

Some fans have asked if they would get 20% off their ticket price given that the race was previously advertised as a 500-lap event. They have a point, but it’s not about whether the race ticket is worth any less. It’s about being honest with a fan base. This decision should have been announced before tickets went on sale or, at the very least, shared once it was close to being finalized. Fans deserve to know what they’re buying, and any disgruntled fan should get a refund if the 400-lap event is a deal-breaker.

Social spotlight

Stat of the day

This year's Busch Light Clash (Feb. 6 with heats starting at 3 p.m. ET on FOX) will, of course, be held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Coliseum will be the 16th different track Cup has competed on in California.

They said it

"This is my 10th Hall of Fame. They all mean the world to me. This NASCAR Hall of Fame ... is the gold star on top of that Christmas tree." — Red Farmer at his NASCAR Hall of Fame induction

Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!