When Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) announced it would cease operations at the end of the 2024 racing season, four NASCAR Ford Cup Series drivers suddenly found themselves without a ride in 2025. Now, all four of those drivers have been snatched up by other Cup Series teams, including Ryan Preece, who will stay in The Blue Oval camp next year to drive a third Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing (RFK).
The New York Times dropped the news in a report on Tuesday, revealing that RFK will expand to a three-car operation in 2025. Currently, RFK fields the No. 6 Mustang for part-owner Brad Keselowski alongside the No. 17 Mustang for Chris Buescher fulltime. The NASCAR Ford team has also fielded a third part-time entry as part of its “Stage60” initiative. Next year, though, the team will run three Mustang teams fulltime in the Cup Series, adopting Preece as its newest driver. At this time, RFK has not discussed the sponsor lineup or number that will decorate Preece’s race car.
However, the three-car expansion will be made possible through a new partnership with Kroger, which will provide funding for all three entries in 2025. Kroger currently sponsors the No. 47 Chevy Camaro ZL1 of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but will part company with the Chevy team at the end of 2024 to focus solely on its partnership with RFK.
It’s not clear if the third RFK entry for Preece is the result of a charter purchase, but that’s likely the case, considering the astronomical cost of running a race car without a charter at NASCAR’s highest echelon.
“We don’t have any announcements that we’re ready to make, but hopefully we’ll have something to share with everybody here in the next month or so,” Keselowski told The Athletic. “But nothing publicly that I’m ready to talk about.”
Keselowski is currently the only RFK entry in the 2024 Playoffs and will compete for the title in the forthcoming Round of 16 opener at Atlanta on September 8th, 2024.
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Oh god no… it’s seriouslly ? In addition to that crying fat ball who is in 17th and couldn’t even qualify by points, will he get the worst driver in Haas? Why did you let Briscoe go to Toyota or Gragson… even Zane Smith who went to Chevy would have been more sensible!