It seems the game for the musical racing seats at Kaulig Racing is about to end, and we found out with more of a whisper than a bang. In an announcement that can only be described as disappointing, Kaulig Racing casually dropped the news on social media Thursday that AJ Allmendinger will return to the NASCAR Cup Series full-time next season. No press release, no feel-good quotes peppered with words like “excited” and “welcome back” — just a simple post explaining that Allmendinger will be back.

In fact, it’s possible that you missed it if you blinked.

This is the same team that, less than a year ago, made a whole show of Allmendinger stepping down from his full-time Cup job to focus on the Xfinity Series. At the time, Chris Rice, the ever-enthusiastic president of Kaulig Racing, raved about Allmendinger, declaring him the key to their continued growth.

“We believe that AJ (Allmendinger)’s full-time return to our Xfinity Series program gives us the best opportunity to continue to grow our organization as a whole,” he gushed at the time in an almost poetic statement. “He’s passionate, he’s aggressive and he pushes us to keep getting better. We’re excited to see what we can accomplish on both the Xfinity and Cup sides in the 2024 season.”

Fast forward to today: The silence is deafening.

Allmendinger has done well in Xfinity this season, posting three top-fives and 10 top-tens, and currently sits sixth in the standings. His sporadic appearances in the Cup Series, meanwhile, have been decent but nothing special — three top-tens in 10 starts. Aside from the “dinger,” the No. 16 car has been a revolving door of drivers this season, with Ty Dillon, Derek Kraus, Josh Williams and even Shane van Gisbergen taking turns. Ty Gibbs managed the best finish among them — a 16th-place finish at Texas, which isn’t exactly setting the world on fire.

But now the rotating cast is over. Allmendinger will return to his place full-time, but how he feels about this sudden turnaround remains to be seen. Last year he seemed almost blindsided by the news that he would retire from Cup racing altogether, but he played the good soldier and stuck to the company line of doing what was best for the team. This time, there is no word from him or the team. No quotes, no statements and no media presence in sight.

So was the multi-driver experiment this season a success? Did they learn anything from the exercise? It’s all a bit of a mystery, like Allmendinger’s own feelings about returning to Cup racing each week. One thing is certain: He has outperformed the others in the No. 16 this season, and that probably had something to do with the decision. But Kaulig Racing’s muted announcement leaves plenty to the imagination.

Perhaps Allmendinger’s performance on the track speaks most clearly. After all, two of his three Cup wins came with Kaulig, including the team’s first. If he can score another win in the few remaining races he has this season in the No. 16 Cup car, that might be the clearest statement of all.