Dale Earnhardt Jr. comments fuel speculation over owning NASCAR Cup team

As NASCAR enters its next phase with a $7.7 billion TV deal, interest in the sport has rarely been higher. And that influx of new interest in the sport could mean some enticing possibilities for well-connected people like Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Earnhardt was recently asked about the possibility of owning a Cup team at some point down the road, and he left the door wide open.

“We may be able to latch onto some of that momentum and some of those happenings, we may not,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “Some other programs may benefit from it, some programs that are already in the sport probably already benefiting from some new partnerships and investments. Gibbs and Trackhouse and so forth.

“Yeah, we’re just kind of like hanging out. If it doesn’t happen I don’t know that it will be a massive regret of mine, but we race. Me and Kelley talk about it all the time: We race. We were born into this, this is who we are, we’re always going to be this. And so if we end up presented with an opportunity that feels really good, we would certainly be interested in doing it.”

Earnhardt’s sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, is the CEO of JR Motorsports, and she, too, recently opened up on Cup level interest on Kenny Conversation.

She offered a bit of a full picture, weighing possible outcomes against what it would take to produce them.

“If you think about what it means to be a Cup owner, what it means to be a Cup owner today is that I need a very valuable charter to make it work,” Miller said. “Do I put out the money for that charter today at 51 years old, and Dale’s turning… I’m turning 52 and he’s turning 50. So I hope I get to retire at 65, you know? I hope that I can go enjoy some life. Dale’s like in a whole second life of his life, right? With marriage and kids and all that kind of stuff.

“So it’s like you have this asset over here that can appreciate and provide value long-term, but how hard you have to work to make the business model work and do you want to work that hard for the next 10 or 15 years when you already worked 25 years really hard to do what we do now and to be what we are now?”

Both Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller seem perfectly content to keep operating in their current space in the Xfinity Series. It’s rewarding work, and it probably taxes them a little less than the Cup Series would.

Still, you can almost sense the itch in Earnhardt’s voice as he talks about the possibility.

“If it doesn’t materialize it doesn’t materialize. And we’re happy where we are,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “We love being in Xfinity Series. You’ve got opportunities to work with young drivers. And although they’re only there for a moment, it’s such a cool thing being just a part of their story. And you can look in the garage. Mechanics, engineers and crew chiefs and drivers in the top series and see a lot of people that have come through our program. Makes you feel good that you’re an asset. Somebody’s got to be there in that space, right? Helping give a platform for people to get to the Cup level. So I kind of love that and it would be hard to turn that off.”

Could that exist at the Cup Series level? It would look different.

Right now, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a lot of irons in the fire. Time will tell whether one of them is a spot in the Cup Series again.

“We’ve got Dirty Mo Media rocking and rolling,” Miller said. “Our Xfinity team, I could run eight to 10 cars if I had the facility and the ability. It’s flourishing from the standpoint of being on track. Dale, Dale’s doing TV, Dale’s doing a lot of great things.

“So we have a lot of great stuff going on, you know? We want to be Cup owners, it just has to make sense in the end. There’s a lot of variables for it to make sense.”