Dale Earnhardt Jr. addresses JRM future in Cup Series, reacts to Justin Allgaier top-10 finish at Daytona 500

The Daytona 500 on Sunday provided an interesting opportunity for Dale Earnhardt Jr. JR Motorsports fielded a car at the Cup Series level for the first time.

It’s something Earnhardt had been itching to do for a long time, but he wanted to wait for the right opportunity.

A partnership with sponsor Traveller’s Whiskey paved the way for Justin Allgaier to get behind the wheel of the No. 40 car. It meant the world to Earnhardt and might be proof of concept that he can get a car to the Cup Series full time with a little more sponsor help.

“It really was good for me, I think, to come here and experience this, to see if it was truly something that I felt like I wanted,” Earnhardt told reporters after the race. “Because sometimes you wonder because of growing up in the sport and your last name, are you making yourself do this because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do? Do you really want to do it? This helped me understand that I do want to be here personally and I do feel like it’s what I should be striving for.

“And we love being in the Xfinity Series and we’ve got a great business model, and we think we do a great job there. But it would be a big challenge but something I think that Kelley and I could put a lot of effort in for the next several years. So we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ve been sitting at this position for a long time, and I know people get tired of hearing it from me. But I was so thankful for this opportunity. If this was it, this was it.”

Allgaier had a strong showing in the race, finishing P9. His car looked the part, with one of the stronger overall schemes in the race.

Earnhardt thinks the showing might open the door for some other sponsors.

“I think we hit it out of the park in terms of our activation with Traveller,” Earnhardt said. “I think JR Motorsports did what they always do, and that’s engagement and marketing better than anybody in the sport or as good as anybody. So we’ll see if that is exciting for them, if they want to continue doing this or do it again sometime this year or maybe somebody else calls us on Monday that has some other ideas. But we’re always ready. Have been for years. So we’ll see.”

As for captaining a team full-time at the Cup Series level, Earnhardt and JR Motorsports will take it slowly. First off, Earnhardt said he’s not in a position financially to buy a charter by himself.

So there are certainly still some hurdles to overcome.

But the race at the Daytona 500 gave Earnhardt the itch again. He wasn’t sure it would, but now he knows for sure. It was validation in many ways.

“Yeah, yeah. I want to be here and I think Kelley wants to be here and I think we can be successful here,” Earnhardt said. “I think with the new charter model it’s more economical to be here. And so I feel like with our ability to draw interest in terms of sponsorship and support, it’s an economical model for us with the new charter agreement. And I feel like that the charters will continue to increase in value, so if there’s somebody that watches what we’re doing here that’s not involved in the sport but would invest, we would be a good partner to consider because we know we have a good business model in the Xfinity Series. We know we have the ability to bring sponsor interest to our teams to be able to help fund our operation.

“But I think the overall hurdle is the initial investment in a charter, and I can put some money in but I will not, even if I had it, I would not buy the entire thing myself. So I can’t risk my kids’ inheritance and future on some idea, right, of my own. That’s a selfish thing. But I would certainly want to be an investor in any charter that we would be involved in. The charters, though, I think are at the value now where you almost have to have partners to get in if you’re somebody like myself. But we’ll see. I told Kelly that this could create some new conversations with people we haven’t had conversations with yet. We’ve been on the phone and at the table with other people that were interested in investing in charters that didn’t work out. But we could have some brand new conversations, so you just wait and see. If it’s meant to be it’ll happen.”