Frankie Muniz is going all in on race car driving — and leaving acting on the back burner — come 2025.
“I’m extremely excited to announce that I will be racing full time next season in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series,” Muniz, 38, announced during the Fox & Friends broadcast on Tuesday, October 22.
The Malcolm in the Middle alum revealed that he’ll be riding the No. 33 car for Reaume Brothers Racing in a Ford F-150 truck. “It’s a dream come true. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do,” he gushed. “I’m thrilled. I can’t wait.”
Muniz, who has been acting since he was a kid, broke into racing in 2004 during a celebrity event. Two years later, he made his professional racing debut. He collected one top-five finish and 11 top-ten finishes in the ARCA Menards Series in 2023. After totaling all his points for the year, Muniz finished in fourth place.
“We had a lot of success last year,” Muniz said on Tuesday, explaining why he was ready to go full-force in the new year. “Making the leap up to the truck series is a whole other level. 36 trucks start the race, and all 36 drivers are really, really good.”
He noted, “If I’m going to do this, I want to dedicate myself to it 100 percent. I’m doing everything I can to be prepared for the races and be the best race car driver I can be.”
It wasn’t a “hard decision” for Muniz to turn his focus on racing instead of acting.
“This is something that I’ve been working [toward] for literally 20 years when I did my first race,” Muniz said of racing. “That feeling of crossing the finish line first in that pro-celebrity race, was an incredible, incredible feeling and I’ve been chasing that.”
In addition to acting and now racing, Muniz is a dedicated husband and father. He married Paige Price in October 2019. The couple welcomed their son, Mauz, in March 2021.
Muniz’s role as a father has only added to his desire to race over acting. “A lot of the reason why I went back [to] racing [was] because I wanted him to grow up actually seeing me work hard and strive for a goal and not just be like, ‘Oh, I used to be this actor,’” he exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month.
“I wanted him to actually see me doing something,” Muniz said, adding that he hopes Mauz will also enjoy watching him on TV eventually. “I hope he’s not embarrassed by the things that I did in my past. I hope he thinks it’s cool, but we’ll see.”