What’s Happening to Rev Racing?

In 2024, Rev Racing looked like a team on the come-up, going down the MHR route. An ARCA team that transitioned to trucks and achieved immediate success. Making the playoffs back-to-back in their 1st year with Sanchez, clenching their 1st two truck series wins in 2024, and Pera winning the ARCA title in 2024 too!

This Year Their Truck Team isn’t around: Why?

To answer that question, we have to understand why they don’t have a truck team. Having technical alliances with both KBM and Spire. Race-winning teams are at the top of their games. Combine that with the years of funding and experience Rev Racing has accumulated since its involvement in the lower series in 2009. Helping to develop the likes of Kyle Larson, Bubba Wallace, Daniel Suarez, Sergio Pena, and Nick Sanchez, who went on to drive for the Rev Racing truck team. Who, after his success, moved up to Xfinity, where he made the playoffs this year.

So if this is a team with such a rich history of developing talent and has been 1 for 1 with its truck team, why sell it before it can blossom and maybe even win a title? Well, it goes back to the very partnerships that Rev Racing built its truck team on. In 2023, Rev Racing started its truck team with heavy ties to KBM. Kyle Busch’s truck team, which had won two Truck Series titles and exactly 100 truck victories, was a smart horse to bet on. And it paid off with a 6th place finish in the standings with Sanchez.

However, before 2024, Kyle Busch decided to focus more on his family and his new team, RCR. So he sold his truck team to Spire, and with that, Rev Racing came along with them, forming another strong partnership with another top team. Spire won off the bat in trucks, and Rev Racing earned two wins in trucks in 2024. It should’ve been that simple, but it wasn’t. KBM would sue Rev Racing for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, which I didn’t even know was illegal.

Kyle Busch Motorsports Lawsuit

KBM alleges that Rev Racing had missed several payments throughout the 2023 season. The lawsuit seeks the repayment of $325,000 plus interest and attorney’s fees after Rev Racing only paid Kyle Busch Motorsports $2.575 million of its $2.9M agreement with the organization for last season. Now, Rev Racing’s Spire partnership has made them the fourth Spire truck, one that finished best of all Spire trucks in the points at the end of 2024. But Spire decided to end its partnership with them and not run a 4th truck, and Rev Racing chose to bow out of the series.

Losing out on tons of sponsorship money and winnings. All of which is much more than in ARCA. Not to mention the boost in attention and prestige that came with it, not to say that it wasn’t even a sale, so they couldn’t earn extra money from selling assets. However, that doesn’t explain why they haven’t won an ARCA race this year.

Rev Racing’s ARCA Struggles

Lavar Scott currently sits 2nd in points, though he himself only has two runner-up finishes this year and hasn’t won yet in ARCA. Sitting 50 points behind Brendan Queen, who has won 5 races this year with the much newer Pinnacle Racing Group. And in ARCA East, in 9 starts, they haven’t won a race either.

Part of it is the inexperience of Lavar Scott, who leads Rev right now. He went from a full-time rookie year in the ARCA East series without getting a win to going full-time in ARCA, where he still hasn’t won. One could accuse him of rushing Scott, but as long as he’s willing to stay in the series till he figures it out, it should be suitable for his development, in fact.

The part-time Xfinity starts only helping. But part of it is lacking funding and support from NASCAR as well. Rev Racing was built on the foundation of Drive for Diversity. Something that was once supported by some of NASCAR’s biggest names, including executives from Roush, RCR, Evernham, and McAnally-Hillegass Racing.

Final Thoughts

No,w Rev Racing is the only team left supporting it; this has allowed teams like Pinnacle, which gets massive support from Chevy, to pass them, leaving them in limbo. If they’re smart about driver development, how to sell themselves, and who to partner with, it could only be a bump in the road, and we could even see them return to trucks in 1 day! Thanks a bunch for reading!