Rookie debut: Carson Ferguson

Carson Ferguson is about to make one of the stranger jumps in stock-car racing. On Friday, April 10, the 25-year-old dirt Late Model regular from Lincolnton, North Carolina, is scheduled to make his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut at Bristol Motor Speedway in Kaulig Racing’s No. 25 Ram 1500. That is the headline. The real story is how many other stories are packed inside it: a reality show, a manufacturer comeback, and a truck built to change drivers as often as it changes paint scuffs (floracing.com, kauligracing.com). Ferguson did not get here through the usual ladder. He was not groomed in ARCA for years and then moved up on schedule. He earned this start through *Race for the Seat*, an eight-episode Ram and Kaulig competition that put 15 grassroots drivers through a televised audition for a full-time truck ride. Ferguson finished second overall to Timothy “Mini” Tyrrell, but he won the finale’s 20-lap Late Model Stock race at South Boston Speedway and collected $50,000. Kaulig had originally pointed him toward a one-off at Martinsville on October 30. Then the team decided Bristol was the better test, and moved the debut forward by six months (kauligracing.com, floracing.com, media.stellantisnorthamerica.com). That decision makes more sense once you see what the No. 25 truck is supposed to be. Ram and Kaulig announced the “Free Agent Driver Program” in November as a season-long rotating seat for drivers from different corners of racing. The point was never stability. The point was attention. Ram’s CEO, Tim Kuniskis, described it as a way to stretch fan interest beyond a fixed roster, with each race weekend becoming its own reveal. The No. 25 is less a normal entry than a rolling casting call with NASCAR approval attached (nascar.com). That, in turn, is part of Ram’s larger return to NASCAR. The brand announced in June 2025 that it would come back to the Truck Series in 2026 after 13 years away, giving the series a fourth manufacturer alongside Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota. NASCAR treated the move as a real inflection point because no new OEM had joined its national ranks since Toyota entered Trucks in 2004. Ram treated it like a product launch, complete with a concept race truck, a “Ram-Demption” campaign, and a promise that its return would not look like anyone else’s (nascar.com, prnewswire.com). Ferguson fits that plan because he brings a different kind of credibility. He races full-time in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series for Paylor Motorsports, sits 12th in points through 14 of 60 races, and already owns titles in the Schaeffer’s Oil Spring Nationals Series and the FASTRAK Racing Series. Bristol will also be his first NASCAR national-series start, which means Ram is using one of its most visible marketing vehicles to hand a national debut to a driver whose résumé was built mostly on dirt, not pavement (floracing.com, kauligracing.com). And Bristol is not a soft landing. NASCAR’s entry list for the Friday night Tennessee Army National Guard 250 shows 37 trucks, including Kyle Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ross Chastain, Daniel Suárez, and defending series champion Corey Heim, who has won the last two races and is chasing a three-race Triple Truck Challenge sweep worth $500,000. Ferguson is listed in the No. 18 spot on that official entry list. The race starts at 7:30 p.m. ET on FS1, on a high-banked half-mile where there is almost no time to hide (nascar.com, kauligracing.com).