For ways better and worse, Dale Earnhardt Jr. concedes this is a much different NASCAR than the one he grew watching and eventually participated in as a driver at the highest level for nearly two decades.
This conclusion was part of a conversation with Kevin Harvick on the NASCAR on FOX Happy Hour show.
Specifically, the conversation was about Earnhardt recently entering a car in the Daytona 500 under the JR Motorsports banner with driver Justin Allgaier and the Traveller Whiskey brand. Earnhardt has long said there is interest in going full-time Cup Series racing as an owner but conceded all the reasons the business model makes it a challenge.
Specifically, he doesn’t have a charter and isn’t going to spend the $40 million and climbing amount it takes to get one.
“I have been around long enough to remember that if you and I just woke up one day and said, ‘Man, we’re going to enter a Cup car in any race we want,’ we can go find us a car, find us a driver, get all the parts and go do it, right? Now, there’s some couple hoops. You’ve got to get licensed and got to enter the car, pay the money, the entry fee, all that good stuff. But it was pretty much an understandable challenge,” Earnhardt said. “Today, to just get out there and compete, you need that $50 million charter, and that charter is going to be $100 million and $150 million and $200 million — it’s going to go to the moon over the next several years. It was a good time to buy it 10 years ago. I regret that I didn’t. But it’s become this place where only people with that kind of money can play.”
“The world, the NASCAR that I knew, in terms of just being able to field the car and go race, doesn’t exist anymore. That’s hard for me to just believe, that we’re in that — for me to go run an open car isn’t realistic. It’s not realistic for anybody to do it every single week. But while that is tough for me to stomach, it is incredibly great for the current people that are involved in the sport. Great for NASCAR, great for the France family, great for the owners and teams that have those charters that are appreciating year after year, hour after hour.
“They’re just going up. But for somebody who’s trying to get in? You can’t play unless you got a big entity behind you. Somebody with real cash.”
Nowadays, teams are securing private equity money to fund their Cup Series operations. Earnhardt has also admitted it was probably a mistake to have not purchased a charter when one could have been had for a $1-2 million. Now, if JR Motorsports is going to enter the Cup Series, he says it will have to be with an investor that will let him operate the team as he sees fit and someone willing to pay for it and give up control is hard to find.
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