After two seasons in the Craftsman Truck Series, Daniel Dye felt ready for the full-time leap to the Xfinity Series. The decision to join Kaulig Racing was an easy one to make.
Dye ran 10 races with Kaulig in 2024 to get a feel for what he was jumping into. The differences were drastic, as the Florida native qualified for the postseason in his lone season with McAnally-Hilgemann Racing. The Xfinity side was tougher, though, as he acclimated to the series with a pair of top 10s.
“It knocks off a handful of the unknowns, which is good to come into something that is not completely brand new and fresh,” Dye told Jayski of his 10-race stint last year. “My focus was the Truck Series, but throwing some things in the notebook last year was good. I think it helped us this year. Unfortunately, you can’t see that because of the wild ups and downs we’ve had this year.”
Amid a steep rookie Xfinity class that features the likes of a young phenom in Connor Zilisch and a host of drivers looking to make a household name for themselves, Dye is the penultimate rookie in the championship standings. He’s ahead of William Sawalich, who’s had a dreadful season with powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing.
Chris Rice, Kaulig Racing’s team president, has admitted that its Xfinity program has lacked over the last year-and-a-half. Dye’s numbers reflect that, with seven top-10 finishes in the opening 24 races of the campaign. They aren’t much dissimilar from rookie teammate Christian Eckes’ results, however, who also made the jump to the series.
“I thought it started really well and we fell off in the middle and I think he’s had some awful luck lately,” Rice said of Dye. “I would give him a C. I would like to see him in the B range. The kid can do it. Is he going to go out there and fire off and sit on poles? Probably not, but he can race well.
“We haven’t given him anything to go off of. We don’t have an AJ (Allmendinger) sitting in there, somebody to help him or anything like that. We’ve got nothing, so he’s had to figure it out on his own and he’s done a good job.”
Moving to the series with Eckes, who is among the brightest prospects in the sport, has done wonders for Dye. When he competed in his rookie truck campaign with GMS Racing in 2023, he leaned heavily on Eckes. That relationship grew in 2024, as he joined McAnally.
“Christian has been the best teammate I’ve ever had and was actually my best teammate at GMS when we weren’t even teammates,” Dye said. “Out of the two guys that were my teammates and then the other two at McAnally, Christian was my best teammate out of those four. We continued to be that way last year when we were real teammates and are still that way this year.”
Dye considers 2025 to be “up and down,” similar to a yo-yo. He’s leaned heavily on Allmendinger, who returned to the Cup level after spending 2024 battling for an Xfinity title.
“It’s been a great experience and I’ve learned a lot, trying to be a sponge and lean on everyone that I can,” Dye added. “We’re struggling a little bit, and we’re struggling together. We talk all the time and we’re doing what we can as a race team to keep pushing and make Kaulig Racing and their Xfinity program better.”
With two races remaining in the regular season, Dye will need to win at either Portland International Raceway – he’s not the biggest road-course fan – or World Wide Technology Raceway, which he considers one of his favorite race tracks. Regardless, he can recount a trio of races where he had a capable car and either wrecked or got disqualified (Nashville).
“I wish we were a little closer to being in the playoffs,” Dye noted. “There are a handful of things that did not go our way. Also some races where we needed to run better and we didn’t. This is probably the craziest and most inconsistent year. It’s this sport. They throw curveballs at you from all directions.”
The pairing has meshed, Rice believes, because Dye believes in the vision that Kaulig has. Over the weekend, the company announced it will operate a Craftsman Truck Series program as the anchor organization for Ram in 2026 with five full-time teams.
Rice is uncertain who will fill those seats, accepting that he needs to hire upwards of 50 people before 2026. It’s possible that Dye fills one of those rides as his father Randy is the owner of the Daytona Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram dealership, where the team had the announcement.
Neither Rice or Dye could confirm if he will return to the Truck Series in 2026.
“We’re going to have a lot of people beating us up since we are the anchor team like, ‘what are we going to do?’” Rice stated. “We have a lot of questions to answer, but as we go through drivers and look at drivers, everyone will be interviewed.”
Dye is happy for his father helping bring another OEM into NASCAR. However, he’s been in the Chevrolet pipeline for the last three years at the national level, crediting Josh Wise for doing wonders for his development.
“[It’s] transformed my career and I owe a lot to them,” he said. “But on the other end of things, still excited that all of my dad’s hard work on trying to bring these guys back to the sport is paying off and I think they’ve picked a good organization to do so with.”