Earlier this week, NASCAR announced O’Reilly Auto Parts would be taking over as the title-sponsor for the Xfinity Series in 2026. A couple of ideas have been floated around since then, like Cup Series wheelmen being able to race more than five times in the lower series next season. Dale Earnhardt Jr. had some interesting […]
Earlier this week, NASCAR announced O’Reilly Auto Parts would be taking over as the title-sponsor for the Xfinity Series in 2026. A couple of ideas have been floated around since then, like Cup Series wheelmen being able to race more than five times in the lower series next season.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. had some interesting thoughts on the matter. He’s in a unique position, as a former driver who’s now an owner in the Xfinity Series on the latest episode of his Dale Jr. Download podcast.
“I think it’s fine. I mean, they compete in them now. They’ve limited them to, like, what, five starts a year? I don’t even know what it is, so I can’t really complain about it, because I don’t even know what the limits are now. I didn’t like when they could race for the championship. I mean, I didn’t like that. Right now it’s five (starts), but I’d be fine if they went to ten,” Earnhardt Jr. explained.
“The thing is, there’s a lot to it. Fans will say, ‘I want to see the Cup guys in those races.’ Fans are going to tune in more if more Cup guys are in those races. If you’re a fan of somebody like Kyle Busch or whoever, and you want to see him race more, and you’re going to the race—like you’re physically there on the race weekend—you’re more excited to see the Saturday race, because your guy’s out there.
“So, there’s a lot of people that want to see that. They want to see the Cup guys out there more, and I get that. As a car owner, there’s a perfect balance. Like, yes, I want Cup guys in my cars, because, man, they go win some races, right? I love that. But if I’m in a situation where I’m a regular, and I don’t have a Cup guy in my car —if I own a team that doesn’t have Cup resources, doesn’t have Cup drivers, then my chance to win, or even run in the top ten—gets harder.”
One area the NASCAR Hall of Famer expects to see change if this comes to fruition is the budgets for teams in the Xfinity Series: “Your budget in this series, for a lot of teams, is based off performance. Strictly performance. You don’t have a $5 million check from a sponsor and go, ‘Here’s your budget.’ You budget based on a prediction of how you’re gonna finish,” Earnhardt Jr. added.
“You’re gambling, really, starting the year saying, ‘Man, I’m gonna run all year, and we need to average an 18th, 15th, 12th-place finish. I’m gonna make this much, I’ll spend this much, and at the end of the day, we should come out ahead—or at least flat.’ So, you’re predicting that kind of result. And now the team that maybe was gonna run 8th to 10th on average throughout the year might run 12th to 14th instead.
“Now, they’re making less money, and now they can’t spend as much. Things get tighter. I don’t know how teams made it work back in the day. Like, when we went to Charlotte in the 2000s, you’d have 14 to 20 Cup drivers in the race. You might not have a regular in the top 10. I’m serious. I didn’t have, you know—I wasn’t really a full-time team then. But when we became full-time and had one car, and we had a regular driving it, man, you were lucky to be mingling in the top 10 with some of those Cup guys.
“When you finished sixth, behind five Cup drivers, you were like, ‘Damn right, we’re first in class.’ That was a great day. Things have changed. They made the restrictions, and teams like ours started winning more races. When Kyle Busch quit running 25 races a year, right? When Carl Edwards and those other guys stopped running all those races and winning half of them—or more—teams like ours started winning races, and to go backwards would be tough for us.”
All told, it all comes down to balance for the two-time Daytona 500 champion. He’s not entirely against the idea, but he recognizes there’s challenges that it presents to his team and his peers in the Xfinity Series.
“I encourage competition, and I like it. I think it’d be good if Cup guys could run more—but there’s a balance. There’s a perfect balance,” Earnhardt Jr. elaborated. “I read the quote from O’Donnell, and I don’t think — the question he got asked really wasn’t about this directly. He didn’t offer up the information like, ‘Hey, by the way, along with this announcement with O’Reilly, we’re changing this rule.’
“This question always gets asked—’Is anything going to be different?’—and he said, ‘Hey, we’re always open to it.’ You know, with new partners coming in, they like to make little changes—change something, get people excited, sell a few race tickets, whatever.
“So I could see them making an announcement like, ‘Hey man, we’re going to change it to 10 starts.’ Hopefully, they don’t remove the limit altogether to where Cup guys can run for the championship again. That would be really, really hard on teams like ours, financially.”
Time will tell what NASCAR decides, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. strikes a nuanced chord on the issue. Whether or not they allow more races for Cup Series drivers in the Xfinity Series, there’s an argument for both sides of the issue.
Category: General Sports
