JR Motorsports is running it back in the Daytona 500 in 2026 with Justin Allgaier after a successful Cup Series debut in which they scored a top 10 in the No. 40 car with Traveller Whiskey.
It was a meaningful race for co-owners Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt-Miller, whom aren’t sure if racing full-time in the Cup Series will ever come to fruition, so having made at least one appearance in The Great American Race was a dream come true.
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So the reason to come back for a second attempt is obvious.
“Well, Kelley will tell you that we race. We got a chance to go race, we race. We just wanna race,” Earnhardt said on Monday’s Dale Jr. Download. “The Daytona 500 is the most important race of the season, and I would say that it, for an open team or anybody that wants to enter the race, that probably is the best opportunity financially to do it and not lose money.
“It costs a significant amount of money to run any race, Talladega or whatever. If you wanna go run in the middle of the year or a couple races throughout the year, harder to make the financial work in them other events. This one, we’re just presented with opportunity to go do it. We got some partners that wanna go help us fund it.”
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Allgaier is confirmed for the return trip to Daytona but it is still to be decided if the Hendrick Motorsports supplied team that includes veteran crew chief Greg Ives will all come back with the 2024 Xfinity Series champion.
“Our shop gets excited about it. They feel like it’s their effort,” Earnhardt said. “You see Rodney Childers chiming in on social media and you see our employees get pumped about the idea because it’s their car. It’s our flagship. But I will say this, more than likely, I don’t know for sure 100 percent, but if I had it my way, we would go with exactly the same components, people and personnel as we did last year.
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“Justin’s gonna drive the car. Last year, we had Greg Ives as the crew chief. We had [Barry] Hoover come out of retirement, my old car chief guy. I would have everything as it was. That was a great, fun group of people. They all wanted to be there, they all cared about it. That hopefully comes together.”
Despite the top-10 with a capable crew and driver, Earnhardt is already nervous about even making the show since he doesn’t have a charter that locks them into the race. It’s the new Chevrolet Camaro body style that has him nervous.
“I’m nervous because we’re going to have a new body,” Earnhardt said. “Anytime a manufacturer gets a new body, they don’t go to Daytona and perform better. You’re figuring out kind of what makes that body perform at a track like that. I don’t know details, I just shoot it straight. Every time a manufacturer changes the body, they’re trying their best in every way, when a new body is coming in, to make their cars more competitive at the tracks that we race the most.
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“They’re always trying to put a character line in there or fudge the quarter panel, or whatever the nose in such a way they’re working with the teams to go, ‘Hey man, this is what we need, this would make us better. Well, let’s see if we can get it passed through. Will NASCAR accept it?’ NASCAR will run it through some tests and aero and stuff like that to make sure it’s not like this massive advantage comparable to the other manufacturers.”
So, with all of that in mind, Earnhardt is tempering expectations.
“You got to rein all the expectations back in to man, we just got to get in the show. Let’s get in the show. We’re not locked in,” Earnhardt said. “New body, don’t know how the car will qualify. We thought we were gonna do alright last year and we didn’t in qualifying. I’ll be apprehensive about our opportunity in just pure speed on qualifying. We may have to go back and race our way in.
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“… You just want to get there and roll the car out for Sunday morning and put it on the grid. That’s a proud moment, pushing a car out on to the grid and standing there watching your driver. That’s a proud moment. … Hopefully we can go back. It’ll be hard to recreate the experience and the success we had last year. So, everybody will have to be realistic.”
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