I’m not surprised by this. It was immediately obvious that KBM wasn’t gonna be the same without the massive amount of support and sponsorship partners Toyota poured into that team. I just knew that Kyle Busch couldn’t have been happy going from battling for championships to employing mid-level pay drivers like Chase Purdy or not even mid-level in Jack Wood, the economics of running that team just totally changed overnight even though they were still building quality equipment.

I’ll be excited to see what Spire is looking like next year with a 3 car team with serious sponsorship backing, all the tools to be the top performing Chevy team in the Truck series, maybe continuing to dabble at the Xfinity level now that they own a chassis manufacturing company. After years coasting in the back, they are really shooting their shot at multiseries relevancy

Wish I had the kind of money that can buy an Indycar seat with the best team after only managing to finish 10th in Indy NXT points and 6th of HMD.

Tbh, it makes the announcement a while back that they would no longer be employing pay drivers a lot less impressive if they just eliminate a car rather than take one on. If those were the two choices, I would have just hired David Malukas, he’s a much better driver than Devlin or the other young drivers with budget.

The way he brings up Spire’s gradual rise in performance the last few years and brings up the RFK alliance and brings up how Ware really pursued him, it makes me really think that Rick Ware made some serious promises to invest in and improve the team to entice a much better caliber of driver than RWR shouldn’t usually be able to get.

Bob Pockrass on the birdsite debunked the theory that Todd Braun owns the other Kaulig Charter, he said to the best of anybody’s knowledge both charters are at least majority in Matt Kaulig’s control.

Rather, he said for a couple months now despite never reported it has been kind of of an open secret in the garage that Austin Hill is the favorite for the 2nd Kaulig car cause his loyal sponsors plan on coming with him and Kaulig wants to self-sponsor the 31 less.

I found this really surprising, Justin has had a really solid season this year, he’s kept up largely with AJ and is distantly in the conversation for the final transfer spots in the playoffs. I really thought he would have been re-signed.

Could just be as simple as Kaulig balking at paying Justin a fair wage when they have the likely much cheaper Chandler Smith waiting, and Rick Ware having surprisingly deep pockets if you consider his diverse portfolio of race teams now. However, you got rumors SVG wants to move to NASCAR as soon as next year, through Kaulig’s close RCR relationship you got Austin Hill and Brodie Kostecki, this seat could be a have a lot of potential suitors sniffing around it.

The other question I guess is what promises Rick Ware made to Haley about improving that team in the longterm for him to sign a multi-year contract rather than just a one off hoping something better (like almost any other team) comes open?

I’ve spent my whole life since I was a little kid obsessed with “road ringers”. People like Ron Fellow, Scott Pruett, Boris Said were as much heroes to me as any full-time driver and I always liked to see them show up the full-timers in Trucks or Xfinity. So it was particularly very neat to see a road course ringer win a Cup race for the first time in my entire life.

I think it is too early to make the move, he has impressed everybody and been quicker than most would have thought, but he doesn’t even have a top 5 yet in ARCA. I know time is not on his side, but I think he could seriously use another season where he can put together the funding to race for like Venturini where he should be able to compete for wins and can truly gauge where he’s at, while maybe doing some part-time Xfinity and Truck stuff just gaining experience. Then go to Xfinity after that second year.

I was literally coming here to posit my conspiracy theory that Andretti was looking to buy Spire and Gainbridge came on as sort of presage, and then I see the OP beat me to it. Welp, I guess it goes without saying that I agree, and that I also think Spire would probably be the best multicar team that could be interested in selling so it makes sense.

Truly strange decision making.

What an awful mistake by the Herta crew pitting him a lap too soon, he had the best car arguably but having to save while nobody else around him did just absolutely destroyed one of the best Andretti runs all year.

After the way qualifying has gone for Herta all year, he really needed a good run like that.

This isn’t surprising, I’ve heard reports for months of them talking to officials in both Argentina and Brazil, and the Tourist board or whatever of Argentina has stepped up in a big way as an Indycar and Indy NXT sponsor for Juncos-Hollinger and other different activations within the sport.

The CART series gets its final laugh, lmao.