{"id":343345,"date":"2025-12-13T21:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343345\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T21:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:20:08","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-surprised-nascar-was-threatened-by-srx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343345\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. ‘surprised’ NASCAR was threatened by SRX"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the 23XI Racing<\/a> and Front Row Motorsports<\/a> v. NASCAR antitrust lawsuit was settled during the trial, Dale Earnhardt Jr.<\/a> and sister\/business partner Kelley Earnhardt-Miller took to their podcast studio to discuss some of their thoughts at the time.<\/p>\n

One of those topics was the revelation that NASCAR felt threatened by a certain degree by the Superstar Racing Experience and even reacted to it by \u2018locking down\u2019 tracks with extensive sanctioning agreements.<\/p>\n

Its top executives even made clear how frustrated they felt by SRX both within documents uncovered by the discovery process but also during testimony during the trial itself.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Earnhardt, talking on the Dale Jr. Download expressed surprise that NASCAR felt so strongly about SRX.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gotta be honest, this shocked me,\u201d Earnhardt said on Tuesday\u2019s Dale Jr. Download<\/a>. \u201cI want to say that I\u2019m a big fan, and I think I\u2019m a good friend with Ray Evernham. When he started talking about SRX and what he wanted to do, in his mind, he wanted to re-create IROC. The initial idea of SRX as a series that would go into these local markets, and you would bring out these retired guys and some unique personalities, different forms of racing and offer up a car to the local hero. The original idea of SRX, in my mind, was a good idea. I will say, though, I wasn\u2019t interested in it, personally. Out of the gate, I just didn\u2019t have the bandwidth to get into it. I wasn\u2019t a fan; I didn\u2019t really watch too much of it. \u2026 No offense to anybody out there that was SRX fans or anybody that worked in the series\u2026 but I wasn\u2019t into it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo hear that they were even remotely the least bit threatened is so surprising to me because they\u2019re this giant that\u2019s NASCAR and SRX is just this little thing. They were like 12 cars just barely getting by financially. They\u2019re tearing up so much shit, they had no idea they were gonna tear up so much shit. In the end, they couldn\u2019t make the money work. SRX went away because it\u2019s expensive to operate and the viewership numbers didn\u2019t justify the TV contract and the TV contract couldn\u2019t afford the series, so it just financially didn\u2019t really work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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During the trial, now NASCAR president Steve O\u2019Donnell explained why he said he wanted the legal department from the Sanctioning Body to look at NASCAR. He said it looked more and more like NASCAR when Cup Series drivers and their sponsors started to compete in the mid-week summer short and dirt track series.<\/p>\n

However, O\u2019Donnell also testified that legal said there wasn\u2019t nothing to take action against.<\/p>\n

Regardless, Earnhardt just didn\u2019t understand why this was even a topic of consideration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am surprised by the some of the comments I read from O\u2019Donnell and a couple people of, \u2018Man we gotta put an end to this or we gotta go take a look at this.\u2019 Why are we worried? I don\u2019t care [about the ratings], people were gonna be curious. \u2026 I\u2019m not alarmed by that. \u2026 I was really surprised by that,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201cI never saw, no disrespect, but I never would\u2019ve worried or considered SRX a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would\u2019ve looked at what they were doing\u2026 why do people like it and can we work together? It was interesting because it did morph. You had drivers like Denny, Chase, and Blaney, but Chase goes over there to race with his dad, have a little fun. Blaney with his dad. They were getting paid to go out there and do it for a little bit of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Wilkesboro and Bowman Gray<\/p>\n

Earnhardt directly was even pulled into the internal NASCAR debate as Phelps, O\u2019Donnell and SVP of Strategy Scott Prime concluded the Sanctioning Body needed to schedule races at North Wilkesboro and Bowman Gray Stadium before SRX had a chance to do it with the retired superstar.<\/p>\n

From the aforementioned June 2022 text message exchange between the three:<\/p>\n

O’Donnell: Wait until (Dale) Jr. says he is running an event. Matter of time. They will go to North Wilkesboro with Jr. if we are not careful. We need to be the first back.
Prime: Agreed \u2013 North Wilkesboro and Bowman Gray next year with Jr and friends if we don\u2019t make moves
O\u2019Donnell: How about this for All Star – make it a combo \u2013 Bowman and Wilkes Fri\/Sun
Prime: Sick! And flip it for 2024. We\u2019ve got moves to make. Just need to sell them through. Should be a good working session Thursday<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Wilkesboro and Bowman Gray eventually were added to the Cup Series schedule in 2023 and 2025 respectively.<\/p>\n

However, Earnhardt said the former is to the credit of Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith and the state of North Carolina\u2019s Build Back Better fund contribution.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, there is a lot of stuff about NASCAR in all of this that I don\u2019t know,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201cI don\u2019t know everything about how they run things, and I certainly didn\u2019t know how they felt about some things, and how these text messages have unveiled some things. But I\u2019ll tell you what I do know, is that North Wilkesboro came back because of Marcus Smith \u2026 NASCAR, you know, they didn\u2019t play any role. Now, they have to go, when Marcus comes up and says, \u2018Man, I\u2019ve got this track back together, I want to put it on the schedule.\u2019 They\u2019ve gotta go, \u2018Okay, good.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, look, NASCAR never was going, \u2018Guys, we gotta get Wilkesboro going.\u2019 This isn\u2019t a knock to them, you know, this isn\u2019t a knock to them, they shouldn\u2019t take this as an insult, but Wilkesboro is back because of everybody else. The government, our local government, and the town, a lot of volunteers. Fucking, 20 years of volunteers, people just like even keeping the grass mowed for 20 years. All of those reasons, the fact that they kept the track in somewhat reasonable shape, to even be considered to be brought back. Those people should be commended. You know, we can go on about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earnhardt-Miller also said her brother deserved credit for getting CARS Tour involved and his driving in a race that drew 20,000 fans even before NASCAR and SMI scheduled the All-Star Race.<\/p>\n

He wouldn\u2019t accept it, but it\u2019s objectively true that his star power contributed to the success of an event dubbed \u2018Race Track Revival.\u2019<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports v. NASCAR antitrust lawsuit was settled during the trial, Dale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,149947,634,3628,82],"class_list":["post-343345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dale-earnhardt-jr-surprised-nascar-was-threatened-by-srx","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}