Thirty-eight cars took the green flag in the Fleetio 200 at Darlington Raceway on Saturday night. Twenty-nine were Chevrolets. Seven were Toyotas. One was a Ford.
The Ford was Brad Perez's No. 38 for RSS Racing. It was sent to the back before the green flag, one of four cars penalized for unapproved adjustments, and it went out with a brake problem after 21 laps. It finished 38th, last. RSS has entered that car in 11 of the season's 25 races.
That morning, in the media center at the same racetrack, Alpha Prime Racing announced it is leaving Chevrolet for Ford.
"All of us at Alpha Prime Racing are proud to announce that in 2027, we'll be competing with the Ford Mustang full time in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series," team president Jusan Hamilton said. "We'll have two entries competing throughout the season with the Ford Mustang. It's really the biggest announcement in the history of our company."
Founder Tommy Joe Martins was plainer about what Ford is coming back to. "There are a lack of Fords in this field," he said. "We believe that we can really step up and fill that role and do it really well."
What Ford is getting is two cars from the middle of it. Alpha Prime's full-time entries are the No. 44 of Brennan Poole and the No. 45 of Lavar Scott, 17th and 26th in the standings. Neither driver has won a race for the team. On Saturday, Poole finished 15th and Scott crashed out after 101 laps and was scored 31st.
Nobody at the dais argued otherwise.
"I don't think we have ever been a team that's gone in and tried to claim that we are something that we are not," Martins said. "We are a small team. We know that we're still going to be a small team." What the team wants, he said, is to be "an affiliate-level team," "one of those secondary-type teams."
Asked whether Ford's thin presence in the series had been a matter of money, Martins said he did not think that was it. "I don't think Ford Motor Company has to worry about money," he said.
The equipment is the part they expect to feel first. Alpha Prime will use Roush Yates engines, and Hamilton, declining to speak for Ford, said the change is "a meaningful upgrade for us." Owner Caesar Bacarella, whose team has spent its existence running against better-funded ones, was more direct: "The motors are way more powerful than what we have. It's something we're not used to."
The changeover starts before this season ends. "We're going to start to run and phase in some Ford equipment to close out the season," Hamilton said. "That's very important for us to build a technical baseline and an understanding of what we have, so when we come into 2027 we can hit the ground running."
Which leaves the part nobody addressed. Two full-time Ford seats will exist in this series in 2027. Alpha Prime says its driver lineup for that season will be announced later. Poole and Scott drive the two cars now, and neither was named to either one.