No. 16 Team Capitalizes to Earn Second Consecutive Top 10 Finish in 2025 Season
Lexington, N.C. (March 23, 2025) – After earning a hard fought seventh place finish on Sunday, Allmendinger extended his longest active top 10 finish streak at Homestead-Miami Speedway and now holds the best average finish in the Next-Gen era at the track.
“I thought we had a really solid weekend at Homestead,” said Allmendinger. “We needed a little bit more to go contend in the top five but overall, we had really good speed. I thought Trent [Owens] made some great adjustments after the second stage when we were struggling there just getting too loose. I’m proud to have another good run at Homestead; we had great stops from our pit crew; they were on it all day. It’s really nice to put two top 10s together in a row after the disappointment we had at the start off the year. To come to these races, execute, earn stage points and finish well is really good for us to build momentum.”
In addition to earning their best finish of the season, Allmendinger and the No. 16 team earned their best qualifying effort of 10th this weekend.
“It was a great weekend for us,” said No. 16 crew chief, Trent Owens. “Obviously, AJ’s [Allmendinger] track record here is good, so we had big shoes to fill. He fought hard all day. We got off a little bit there in the middle of the race stage but got it back at the end. It feels really good to see our 16-car come away with two top 10s two weeks in a row. That gives us a little bit of a momentum boost going to Martinsville next week, which isn’t one of our best tracks. I’m really proud of the team, everyone back home and AJ for driving hard, as always. We’ll keep pushing hard to continue improving.”
Capitalizing after last week’s eighth-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Kaulig Racing’s Technical Director, Mike Cook, notes the team’s improvements.
“AJ [Allmendinger] picked up where he left off in Las Vegas,” said Cook. “He was a top 10 car all day there. He qualified well here this weekend and pretty much stayed in the top 10 all day. We will continue to improve as a company and those top 10s will turn into top fives and those top fives will turn into wins.”
Looking at the schedule ahead, Cook continued, “Homestead is one of AJ’s best tracks so we were looking forward to it but that doesn’t mean we can go run well at the tracks coming up, we have them all circled. Really, really good points day for the No. 16 today which is exactly what we needed after the bad luck we had in Daytona and COTA. I’m really proud of all of our guys and all the hard work they’ve put in to get these finishes.”
Allmendinger suffered a blown engine while running eighth in the Daytona 500 and finished 41st, then a tire issue took Allmendinger from forth to 30th in the final laps at COTA. Even with the two catastrophic finishes, Allmendinger finds himself 20th in driver points, just four points from 16th, the final playoff spot.
About Kaulig Racing
Kaulig Racing™ is a full-time, multi-car NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) and NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) team, owned by award winning entrepreneur, Matt Kaulig. Established in 2016, Kaulig Racing™ has earned 27 NXS wins, made the NXS Playoffs consecutively each season since the playoff system started, and won two regular-season championships. In 2021, the team competed in select NCS events, before expanding to a two-car, full-time NCS team in 2022 and adding a third, part-time entry during the 2023 season. Since its first NCS start in 2021, the team has earned two wins. Kaulig Racing is currently fielding two full-time entries in the NCS and continues to field three full-time NXS entries. To learn more about the team, visit kauligracing.com.
