Dale Earnhardt Jr. hints at very popular change to NASCAR Cup Series – Motorsport – Sports

Dale Earnhardt Jr has hinted at a possible change to the NASCAR Cup Series schedule, explaining that he would want to broadcast one specific race.

The racer, presenter and team owner said in a recent episode of Ask Jr that he thought it would be “bad—- for Wilkesboro to be a points race in the summer”. He added: “And I would get to broadcast it.”

North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina is a 0.625-mile paved oval track that has been in use since its inaugural racing season back in 1947. Earnhardt Jr, a Hall of Famer, has his own history with the track – when he was part of the team trying to save it back in 2019.

The venue, which had once hosted two Cup Series races each year, had been left to fall apart 27 years before.

However, Earnhardt and others wanted to preserve the speedway digitally and worked to prepare the track for iRacing simulator scans. After a track cleanup to remove weeds, the scan was completed and added to the simulator in May 2020.

A grant then changed everything, and plans for a restoration of the track were conceptualized. In April 2022, it was announced that racing would resume at the speedway once more.

The next year, Earnhardt celebrated the return of racing at the venue, and said: “Everybody was just so happy to be there, and as soon as the cars started rolling, everybody was like, you know, sort of this surreal moment where you’re thinking, ‘Man, I can’t believe that this is happening.”

Marcus Smith, the Speedway Motorsports president and CEO said at the time: “From the beginning, I have been interested in seeing the speedway be a venue for entertainment and a kind of a destination for festivals and music events, car show events, Christmas shows and of course, races. So we’re already fielding calls for special events that can happen there and working on the future calendar.”

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NASCAR fans headed to Reddit to share their thoughts on Earnhardt’s Wilkesboro comment, and one wrote: “If it comes at the expense of the Bristol spring race, maybe that’ll pack up the crowds for the night race. I like the sound of that.”

Another said: “If this is true, I’m all for it. NWB is too good to be left as just the All-Star Race.” Meanwhile, a third wrote: “If a full points race ends up being even marginally better than the All Star this year sign me up.” Someone else mused: “Hopefully more power becomes a reality like the discussions have been alluding too. I think this place has just been getting better with age, but anything to get the cars a little more unruly is gonna make for a hell of a time.”