Over the past five years, Ohio businessman Matt Kaulig has quickly become one of the most-recognizable figures in the NASCAR Xfinity Series garage area.
It’s not because he’s around too terribly often, or because he’s a larger-than-life personality. In fact, neither of those descriptors is really quite accurate when telling Kaulig’s story.
The reason everyone knows his name is because Kaulig’s cars have been winning frequently.
Kaulig Racing has emerged as one of the fastest-growing forces in NASCAR Xfinity Series competition, rising from fledgling underdog just hoping to survive to bona fide championship contender seemingly overnight.
In reality, it hasn’t quite happened that fast, but Kaulig admits it seems like that sometimes.
“Every once in a while, I just stand back and go, ‘Man, when did all this happen?’” Kaulig told SPEED SPORT. “But we love what we’ve done and how we’ve gotten to this point. It’s been a journey.”
The genesis of that road Kaulig alluded to was in 2014, when Blake Koch was seeking sponsorship at Go FAS Racing and Kaulig lent a hand through his company, LeafFilter Gutter Protection.
That business relationship opened the door to the sport for Kaulig.
“Instead of coming at it this from racing roots, I came at it from marketing roots,” Kaulig noted. “I had the opportunity back in 2014 to sponsor the (No.) 32 car in the Cup Series for a race. Somebody randomly called me out of the blue and asked about sponsorship. So my company, LeafFilter, had the opportunity to run a race at Richmond, but I couldn’t get things together for Richmond, so we ended up sponsoring a car at Charlotte (Motor Speedway) in October that year.
“Blake was our driver and we had a blast; I think we brought 60 people down from the company, and just with all the pictures and the marketing and everything else, we decided to do another race — the season finale at Homestead-Miami (Speedway in Florida), and, man, I just kind of got the (racing) bug.”
Once Kaulig was inside the sport, he was hooked. His two-race sponsorship of Koch in 2014 evolved into a full season of backing TriStar Motorsports in the Xfinity Series in 2015.
But Kaulig began thinking he wanted to do even more. He sat down with Koch, and before long, “more” wasn’t just a thought process — it was a reality.
“Getting to know the NASCAR way and some of the other owners, the people and the drivers and the mechanics … being entrepreneurial, eventually I said, ‘Hey, I think I can do this myself,’” Kaulig recalled. “We were spending enough money on sponsorship where we just started seeing a way that it could make sense to start our own team and go. Blake hooked me up with Chris Rice — who’s now our (team) president — but he became the general manager to start us off.
“We sat down, Blake, myself and Chris Rice, at a steak house and just went through the numbers and saw what was possible. And again, being entrepreneurial, I just went for it and did it,” Kaulig added. “That’s basically how Kaulig Racing was born.”
The team’s first year, led by Koch in the driver’s seat, resulted in a Cinderella playoff berth.
It was the catalyst to two more playoff appearances, in 2017 with Koch again at the wheel, and in 2018 with Ryan Truex wheeling the familiar No. 11 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet.
During those three years, Kaulig focused the growth of his team around a similar mindset to the one he used for LeafFilter Gutter Protection — slow and steady progress.
“Man, our NASCAR ties stem 100 percent from marketing,” Kaulig explained. “As LeafFilter was growing and we were getting more offices, especially down South, we started going into Texas, Alabama and Florida. Obviously, NASCAR is bigger down there than it is in northern Ohio, so we started trying to capitalize on that as we were going south and worked to be able to brand nationally. We saw the opportunity to really gain popularity on the cars and with our brand, but we knew it would take time.
“There are different levels of teams and different funding and different abilities, but one of my goals in starting Kaulig Racing was to be able to run faster and get better,” he continued. “It’s just like in business; you always want to be striving and working toward more. So far we’ve really been able to do that.”
Justin Haley joined Kaulig Racing as its full-time driver in 2019 and carried the team to its fourth consecutive postseason appearance, but it was Ross Chastain who delivered Kaulig Racing its most memorable moment to that point — winning at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway (2019) with Kaulig in attendance.
“We’d never won before. So I mean, obviously that night was a really big deal, to even get our first win, but to be in position to get a win the way we were was impressive,” Kaulig said. “The laps were winding down and I realized inside 20 to go, ‘Hey, we’re actually fast and we are out front and it’s going to be hard for those guys to get us.’
“Then, all of a sudden, we had three cars in the top 10; A.J. (Allmendinger) kind of came out of nowhere there at the end, but Ross had Justin behind him as his wingman and it was a win as an organization, you know? They work together pretty well, all three of those guys do. Now, all three of them have won in the series for us. It’s amazing when you think about it.”
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