Indianapolis, Indiana-August 15th: (LR) Chris Rice is the president of Kaulig Racing, AJ... [+] Allmendinger, #16 Hyperice Chevrolet driver, and Kaulig Racing owner Matt Kaulig at the bricks The courtyard celebrates after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Verizon 200 at the Brickyard of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis on August 15, 2021. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

On a recent Sunday, Matt Collig stood on the starting line of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He knelt down with his driver and staff and made a ceremonial kiss on the "brick yard." This short track without sidewalks exposed the original brick surface of the track and marked the route.

For successful entrepreneurs who participated in the Indianapolis 500 competition several times when they were young, this was a somewhat surreal moment. Growing up, he had no plans to become the NASCAR team owner, but he was there to celebrate his team's first NASCAR Cup series championship.

Historically, NASCAR team bosses have had their own strategies from former drivers to car dealers and even NFL coaches. Matt Collig didn't quite fit that mold. He did not grow up around NASCAR, did not participate in competitions, and did not work on the team. In fact, when he was young, Collig's sport of choice was football.

Collig was born in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up in Cincinnati. In his eighth grade, his family moved to Chicago. Football is his passion, and he became a nationally recognized quarterback in high school. Before earning a business degree in 1996, he was recruited by the University of Akron and served as the quarterback of the school's first-level football team.

He lives near Indy and participated in several Indianapolis 500 games, but his first (and only) real contact with the inner workings of the sport was when he was young. His father worked in marketing for Raybestos Brakes, which provided brakes for many racing cars and sponsored Bobby Allison in NASCAR in the early 1990s.

After graduating from college, motorsport is no longer the focus of fledgling entrepreneurs.

While NASCAR is becoming more and more popular, Kaulig is busy doing business. His first job after graduating from university was selling home improvement products. However, like many successful entrepreneurs, after working for others for nearly a decade, Collig saw an opportunity.

"In 2005, I came across this product, LeafFilter, which is a brand new technology," Kaulig said at one of the many events held for his charity recently. "This is a surgical grade stainless steel screen. Nothing can enter the drain except water... This is a newer product and an amazing product. It sounds strange, it is a gutter screen , But it’s just new technology and the best thing on the market."

As one of 91 distributors of the new product, Kaulig saw the potential of the product and took over the distribution and marketing of LeafFilter, eventually buying the entire company, including patents and manufacturing rights.

By 2014, LeafFilter continued to grow and develop, and Kaulig received a call.

Matt Collig was born in Columbus, Ohio and grew up in Cincinnati. (Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty... [+] Picture)

"It might be Friday afternoon," Cowlig said. "Someone called me and said,'Hey, do you want to put your company's logo on the NASCAR car in the Cup Series?'

"I thought, okay,'I'm sure this is too expensive for us.' He told me a number and it's not expensive at all. So, I said,'Well, tell me more.' He finally Sold it to me at the price it deserves, but we participated in our first race with Go Fas Racing in 2014."

In October 2014, Kaulig took the opportunity to bring 60 LeafFilter members to Charlotte and participated in the company's first game as a sponsor.

"I just think this will be a very good marketing opportunity for LeafFilter," he said. "We are becoming more and more national... We are not anywhere on the West Coast. We are really on the Midwest and East Coast. We are moving further south, such as Texas and North Carolina."

LeafFilter will sign up for the second cup later this year and will return as the main sponsor of the 2015 NASCAR Xfinity series.

But there is a problem.

"It may be half of 2015," Cowlig said. "Entrepreneurship, talking to all the other car owners out there, understanding how other car owners are really learning about NASCAR business, and then getting to know some NASCAR executives. You know, I really started to think,'Hey, I I think I can do better than these people.' So I started talking to manufacturers and started talking to some people in the garage about what it takes to form our own team."

For Kaulig, the turning point came because he realized that the team he sponsored in the Xfinity series was the so-called "start and stop". A team that will start the game but never end.

Charlotte, North Carolina-October 9: Blake Koch, driver of #32 Leaf Filter Ford, for... [+] NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Bank of America 500 on October 9, 2014 in North Carolina in Summer Lot's practice at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo by Jonathan Ferre/NASCAR via Getty Images)

"The expectations are not high," he said. "I mean, people's expectation is not to try to win a championship. We were with a team at the time and it ceased to exist. They didn't spend money, fair or not, but they didn't spend money.

"The whole thing about me is that I am really competitive. I want to be competitive. In fact, some of these teams go there every week and get to 25th, 30th, or 35th. I just , No longer interested in sponsoring a car that will go to 25th place. We really don’t have a chance to smell the victory. I mean, we are four or five laps behind every week."

Collig knew he didn't want to be part of a team that had never finished the race. And he knew that in order to compete, he had to spend money.

"If I want to spend my money on another team, I might as well think about how to do it myself. This is what we did," he said. "From the beginning, we were just trying. This is a NASCAR situation. Well, we have a chance to form a team. If it works well, maybe we can form our own team. If it doesn’t work well, but at least We tried. You know what I’m talking about? I mean, many, many times in life, it’s just about trying."

So in 2016, Matt Kaulig became the owner of the NASCAR team and founded Kaulig Racing. But his new team is not under pressure, at least from the new owner.

"This is not a matter of life and death," Cowlig said. "I have achieved real success on LeafFilter and made money there. And I don't want to say that it's almost like a hobby type thing. But you know, there is no huge pressure of "we have to behave". As you said I know, many teams are under this pressure, man, if they can’t win soon, or if they can’t make the top five soon, then they will have to close their doors.”

The "pressure-free" culture within the team has paid off well. In the five years since the team started participating in the Xfinity series, the team's drivers have won 11 games.

Collig will bring the same "stress-free" culture when he leads the team to participate in the top cup series full-time in 2022. The team has already "made some noise" in its first Cup victory with driver Olmendinger in Indy. This victory is only the seventh game of the cup series, and it is the least number of games any team has participated in before winning the first cup championship.

"Hey, someone must win these games," he said. "I mean, someone will win them. Whether it's speed or luck, or both... We have a lot of talented people in our organization."

Brooklyn, Michigan-August 21st: AJ Allmendinger, #16 RAMCO Specialties Inc. Chevrolet driver,... [+] and Kaulig Racing owner Matt Kaulig at the Ruoff Mortgage victory lane after winning the NASCAR Xfinity series New Holland Celebrate 250 races on August 21, 2021 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan. (Photo by Logan Riley/Getty Images)

His Xfinity team added another victory to the championship at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday, verifying what Collig already knows; the team can defeat the strong NASCAR teams, and they participate in Xfinity and Cup series, such as Team Penske, Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing.

"Big in big," he said. "We have proven that we can compete, and we do compete with them.

"We plan to bring this attitude into the Cup. This is our level of expectation. As I said, when we started to form the Xfinity team, our level of expectation was not to win immediately. Our level of expectation to enter the Cup is not to win champion.

"Our goal is really to wet our feet and figure out our plans in these cars... These guys have been in the Cup for decades. We have participated in seven races. You know, as you change Get better and better, and we will get better and better.

"This is our attitude; figure it out, do our best, figure out and try to use these cars, and then see what happens in a few years from now. What does it bring us? I think we won in the fourth year Won the first Xfinity game. It took four years to win, so it takes time."

Matt Kaulig and his team's participation in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2022 demonstrates a shift from the old ownership model to the new ownership model.

The new cup team will not be like a new team like Michael Jordan. His friendship with driver Danny Hamlin inspired a love of the sport, which led to the formation of 23XI Racing and Grammy award-winning artists Pitbull became the co-owner of Trackhouse Racing to help spread a positive message to the world.

For Kaulig, all of this is business, but it may not make business sense to everyone. The former football star has become a successful entrepreneur, a NASCAR team owner, and has some advice for anyone who wants to try.

"Well, it depends on who you are," Collig said. "There are a lot of people who have bought NASCAR fleets, but they have not purchased the NASCAR fleet business. The reason why it makes sense, and the reason it made sense to me at first is LeafFilter as a marketing tool. You know, if we are going to go public anyway, we Will be controlled. Therefore, I will control the appearance of the team, the way we behave, without actually having to ask anyone else or do it for you. I think this is really important.

 "I am absolutely unique in this sport. I think I am unique, more unique than anyone else, because I am not a racer. Yes. You know, all those who just love racing are racers.

"They are racing drivers. From a commercial point of view, it's so different... It's super fun and super competitive. I like it, I obviously like racing, but I think we look at it from a different perspective from other teams it."

Driven by a "stress-free" attitude, this different perspective may cause Matt Collig and his team to celebrate in Victory Lane many times in the 2022 NASCAR Cup series, or not. If they don't, it won't be too disappointing. After all, they have "kissed the bricks" and know exactly how it feels to win.