{"id":282,"date":"2025-07-11T02:19:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T02:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/282\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T02:19:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T02:19:05","slug":"nascar-stars-pull-out-dad-cards-for-in-season-battle-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/282\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR stars pull out ‘dad cards’ for in-season battle – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

The inaugural NASCAR<\/a> In-Season Challenge is heading for Sonoma, where the final eight will take on one another for a spot in the semi-final at Dover, all with the ultimate goal of winning the $1 million prize in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

Among the four head-to-heads set to take place on Sunday is an inter-team battle between Legacy Motor Club stars Erik Jones in the No. 43 Toyota Camry and John Hunter Nemechek in the No. 42.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the race, Jones and Nemechek have taken the battle to social media, where things are getting personal. On Thursday, Nemechek shared a photo of himself holding Jones\u2019 seven-month-old son David outside of an LMC trailer, accompanied by the caption<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve got David on my side @Erik_Jones.\u201d<\/p>\n

This quickly drew a response from Jones, who commented<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019ll see about that very soon @JHNemechek.\u201d Later, Jones returned with a video of a \u2018conversation\u2019 between himself and David as they shook hands, captioned<\/a>, \u201cThought we were on the same team, @JHNemechek (David is a paid actor.)\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the driver of the No. 43,\u201d Jones said, to which David replied, \u201cI\u2019m your teammate, driver of the No. 42.\u201d Jones then commented, \u201cWe\u2019re against each other in a NASCAR tournament for $1,000,000,\u201d to which his son responded, \u201cI\u2019ll do anything for $1,000,000,\u201d prompting a shocked look from the 29 year old.<\/p>\n

Nemechek, himself a father of two daughters, admitted in the comments, \u201cCan\u2019t even be mad about this,\u201d although that didn\u2019t stop him from sending his teammate a stern warning in a follow-up post. Captioned<\/a>, \u201cLive look at what I\u2019ll have to do if I\u2019m behind @Erik_Jones on Sunday,\u201d the clip shows a young girl driving around a makeshift course on a driveway, but when the adult behind them gets close, they simply spin her out of the way.<\/p>\n

LMC then decided to step in, jokingly commenting, \u201cPulling out all the dad cards this weekend are we? We\u2019re here for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones reached the third round of the Challenge by besting Ross Chastain with a fifth-placed finish in Atlanta and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in Chicago by finishing 25th. Meanwhile, Nemechek got the better of Josh Berry in the first round, finishing 26th, before a 15th-place finish in the second was enough to get past Chase Elliott in the bracket.<\/p>\n

Jones heads to Sonoma having finished 19th on the road course last season, while Nemechek came 29th in what was his first Cup Series race on the track. That being said, Nemechek came eighth in the Xfinity Series at Sonoma in 2024 with Joe Gibbs Racing.<\/p>\n

Whoever emerges from this fierce battle will take on either Ty Dillon or Alex Bowman in the fourth round, while on the other side of the bracket, it\u2019s between Ryan Preece, Tyler Reddick, Ty Gibbs, and Zane Smith to reach the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge is heading for Sonoma, where the final eight will take on one another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[441,443,444,445,425,442,99],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-chase-elliott","tag-erik-jones","tag-john-hunter-nemechek","tag-legacy-motor-club","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-in-season-challenge","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}