After being a part-time driver for over a decade, Ryan Ellis will race the full NASCAR Xfinity Series season in 2024 for Alpha Prime Racing. The team announced his elevated calendar on Friday.
Ellis joined APR in 2022 on a limited calendar in which he entered twelve rounds. This was upgraded to twenty-four of thirty-three races, the majority coming in their newly opened #43 car, and he has since run all but two of the first twenty races in 2023. While he has yet to score a top ten, he came close at Talladega when he placed eleventh in a rain-shortened affair.
He has raced in NASCAR since 2012, originally starting out as a road course ringer due to his experience in the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup. In the decade-plus since, Ellis has raced in all three NASCAR national divisions, making twenty-six starts in the Truck Series and six in the premier Cup Series. His annual action was mostly sporadic prior to joining APR.
Jeffrey Earnhardt was to the team’s only full-time driver for 2023 but has missed two of the last three races. As such, all three APR cars—the #43, #44, and #45—are all being split between multiple names, with Ellis having raced in both the #43 and #45; his eleventh came in the latter.