Dale Earnhardt Jr. Considers the CARS Tour the Best Show on Asphalt

If you have spent any time around a short track on a humid Saturday night, you already know the feeling. It is that distinctive rumble in your chest when a pack of late model stock cars dives into turn one, fighting for an inch of real estate that simply does not exist.

It is the smell of high-octane fuel and vaporized Goodyear rubber. For a long time, the highest levels of professional motorsports felt like they were drifting away from that raw, visceral magic. But Dale Earnhardt Jr. is on a mission to bring it back.

Earnhardt has never been one to shy away from speaking his mind about the state of motorsports. Lately, he has been making serious waves with a bold, uncompromising defense of the CARS Tour.

If you ask him, this grassroots series is not just a cute little stepping stone for teenagers with rich parents. According to Earnhardt, the CARS Tour is actively delivering a brand of white-knuckle, fender-rubbing excitement that absolutely rivals, and sometimes eclipses, what fans see on Sundays in NASCAR’s premier divisions.

1. The Rebirth of Old-School Racing

To understand how we got here, you have to look back at the 2023 ownership shakeup. That was the year Earnhardt teamed up with a veritable Mount Rushmore of modern racing minds, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, and Justin Marks, to purchase the CARS Tour. They did not buy the series to turn it into a sterile, corporate boardroom on wheels. They bought it to save the soul of Saturday night racing. Fast forward to the 2026 season, and the vision Earnhardt laid out is fully coming to life. The tour has completely outgrown its former reputation as just a developmental ladder. Sure, you will still find hungry young hotshoes looking to make a name for themselves, but now they are swapping paint with grizzled veterans who know every crack and bump of these historic short tracks.

2. What Makes the CARS Tour Dangerously Good?

When Earnhardt hopped on Flo Racing to talk about the series, you could hear the passion in his voice. He pointed out a glaring truth about modern racing: the cars have to look like something you would actually want to drive. He noted that the late-model stock cars used in the tour are incredibly “relatable” to the average fan. They look tough, they sound mean, and they are not completely reliant on an aerodynamic wind tunnel to make a pass. But the real magic lies in the parity. Earnhardt stressed that the margins between qualifying positions are razor-thin. We are talking thousandths of a second separating the pole sitter from the guy starting tenth. That kind of suffocating competitiveness breeds desperation, and desperation breeds incredible television. “Our series reminds fans of what they experienced in NASCAR back in the 1980s and 1990s,” Earnhardt explained. “That has really been the identity of the CARS Tour, and we want to hang onto that identity as we grow.” He is entirely right. Fans are exhausted by predictable outcomes and aero-blocks. They want to see drivers wheeling cars that are inherently difficult to drive. They want the ghosts of the 1980s brought back to life under the LED lights of local tracks.

3. The Road Ahead for the 2026 Season

The impact of this ownership group is evident in the grandstands. Fans are tuning in and showing up in droves, drawn to an authentic racing product that doesn’t feel manufactured. The 2026 campaign is a grueling, 14-event gauntlet that kicks off at the legendary Southern National Motorsports Park and ultimately crowns a champion at South Boston Speedway in October. Every single stop on that schedule is a pressure cooker. And as NASCAR continues its own internal efforts to modernize and adapt to a changing demographic, the CARS Tour stands as a beautiful, stubborn monument to how things used to be. It proves that there is a massive, starving market for regional racing tours that put the product on the track above all else. As the grassroots motorsports movement continues to pull in heavy investment and national eyeballs, Earnhardt stands right at the center of the storm. He saw a diamond in the rough, polished it with some of his best friends in the garage, and invited the rest of us to watch it shine.