Dale Earnhardt Jr. calls for NASCAR to take on NFL model

Dale Earnhardt Jr. would for NASCAR to do one thing the NFL does every week. On the latest episode of Dale Jr. Download, the NASCAR legend revealed that he wants the organization to have consistent start times for races every week.

“I’ve always been for 1:00 starts right after the lunch getting the race going,” Earnhardt said. “I feel like people are just coming off of if they’re going to church or just a family lunch or whatever it may be, right after the lunch, BAM! Get the race started.

“The NFL does it every week,1:00 game, 4:00 game. There’s reasons why the networks run it at 3:00 and 3:30, and there’s good reasons why they do it that way. For me, I prefer the 1:00 starts.”

Earnhardt was then asked about NASCAR races being shown on Prime Video next year and whether the next work could push the start time to 1:00 since it’s streaming. “It might be interesting to see if they do since Amazon being a streaming platform, they have so much freedom to do things a little differently such as start times” he explained.

Dale Earnhart Jr. reveals what he likes about the NFL

“I don’t know whether they would move far from where we’re at now. Wherever you want to live, you need to live and live it hard. If you’re going to be a 3:00 start, be a 3:00 start across the board. That’s what I liked about the NFL was I know when the games start. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to look it up, I don’t have to wonder whether it’s 1:30 or 1:00 or 2:30. I know when it starts. That’s when they start. All of them. There’s a batch that’s going to go off at 1:00, there’s a batch that’s going to go off at 4:00. That makes it so easy.”

Earnhardt continued: Wherever we’re going to live, we need to live it hard. We need to as an industry be consistent. I don’t know whether Amazon or anybody would move away from the mid-afternoon start time, but I’d love to see is it get more streamlined to where it’s like ‘Hey, every race is going to start at X time.’

For the 2024 NFL season, the first Sunday of regular season games is on Sept. 8. The league has eight games with 1:00 p.m. ET start times and four games that have a start time of 4:05 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. ET. That is also the same day NASCAR has its first playoff race, the Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway at 3:00 p.m. ET. The final regular season race, the Cook Out Southern 500, has a start time of 6 p.m. ET on Sept. 1.