Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing is having a good season on track, with all its drivers in competitive positions heading into the Chase. But having three consistent drivers is the exact problem they have with going into the 2027 season. 

RFK Racing, which leases a charter to run its #60 Ford driven by Ryan Preece, doesn’t have that option available for the coming season. The charter will return to its owner, Legacy Motorsport. 

The options are few; the first is to buy a charter, which currently is an extremely expensive prospect. Second, would be to lease a charter, of which there are none reportedly available. The third and least favourable option is running open. 

That would require the team to qualify the car every race week and not be guaranteed the payouts that come with having a charter. Dale Jr. weighed in on the subject on a recent episode of his Dale Download podcast. Junior outlines how he sees RFK’s situation. 

“I’ve seen them run tenth all year. It’d be awesome to see them kick it up another notch, go get theirselves to where they’re 4th, 5th,6th every single week. I heard that if they don’t get that third charter, they’ll just run open in the third car and everybody’s gonna be on track.”

Junior explained the situation, considering that team owner Brad Keselowski had said the team is looking at every possibility of running all three cars with the same driver lineup.

"As it stands today, there are no charters that I'm aware of that are for sale. If there was, we'd certainly talk to everyone we'd think could potentially sell one, and they know our interest," Keselowski recently stated.

“I saw it on social media somewhere; they had determined it would be like a $5 million swing or something like that. Not a crazy number from running open to non-open,” said Dale Jr before adding the estimated price of a charter, “$100 million I’d say right now.”

Who loses their seat if RFK doesn’t secure a charter?

The one driver you can already confirm who will drive for team RFK next year is the K in RFK - Brad Keselowski. That leaves the conversation open between the other two drivers, Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece. 

It has been reported that Chris Buescher is in the contract year, meaning competitors are keeping a close watch on the situation. Buescher currently sits 5th in the championship with 375 points. RFK will hope to keep their more consistent driver. 

The leased charter is attached to the car Ryan Preece drives, making him the driver at threat currently, but Preece has expressed his wishes to remain at the Concord-based team. 

Preece has the same hope as owner-driver Keselowski, the team secures a third charter in one way or another. RFK is actively looking at the news around charters, but it looks unlikely that any team would sell or lease a charter because it would mean they run one less car. 

Weirdly enough, the open option looks like the best one till RFK finds a different solution, but the 2027 silly season hasn’t fully kicked in yet, so expect an unforeseen update to change the ongoing crisis at RFK.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason