Drivers in NASCAR’s Cup Series will begin the postseason Chase on Sunday at the Southern 500 in Darlington, South Carolina — one of the sport’s crown jewel races.
But other races are happening in the Palmetto State this weekend, too. One particular competition might have a lot of eyeballs on it Friday night.
About 13 miles south of Darlington at Florence Motor Speedway on Sept. 4, NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. will return to the racetrack to run a late model in the series he co-owns, the CARS Tour.
Earnhardt has competed in races in his Late Model Stock machine before, but this will be the first time he’s running in a Pro Late Model — there are some differences in the build of the car and a Pro Late Model has a lower horsepower.
But ultimately,
it doesn’t matter what kind of car Earnhardt is going to be driving: Him running a race of any kind is a big deal in the world of motorsports.
This race will reunite Earnhardt with his cousin, Tony Eury Jr., who was once his crew chief in the Cup Series. Eury is now the Director of Chassis Development at GMS Race Cars, and Earnhardt will run Friday night in the No. 23 for GMS at the CARS Tour event.
Earnhardt broke the news that he would be racing at Florence earlier this week on his podcast, "The Dale Jr. Download."
“Tony Jr. has been picking at me a little bit about driving one of his cars,” Earnhardt said. “So I said, ‘Hey man, let’s go run Florence.’ They’re building these great cars and they’ve got this new chassis and they’ve been racing them all over the country. It’ll be kind of like a family reunion. I'm looking forward to it.
“(Eury) said, ‘What do you want it to look like?’ And I said ‘don’t care’ and ‘don’t even put my name on it.’ Let’s just show up and drive it.”
The son of seven-time Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt, Junior also had an incredibly successful career in NASCAR. He was twice the champion of the second-tier Busch Series — now called the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series — and twice won the Daytona 500. He was named NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver for 15 consecutive seasons from 2003 to 2017. In 2023, Dale Jr. joined his late father in being named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers.
In all, Earnhardt won 50 NASCAR races in his career, with 26 victories in the top-level Cup Series and another 24 at the O’Reilly level.
Earnhardt battled concussions on the backstretch of his Cup Series career and hasn’t driven a race in the top level of NASCAR since retiring following the 2017 season. He has run a handful of races — mostly at short tracks — in the O’Reilly Series since then for the team he co-owns with his sister Kelley, JR Motorsports. Earnhardt’s last NASCAR race came at Bristol in 2024 where he finished seventh in the O’Reilly race.
Outside of that, Earnhardt typically runs a few times a year in the CARS Tour, a late-model touring series. Other co-owners in the CARS Tour include NASCAR Hall of Famers Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton, Trackhouse Racing owner Justin Marks, and Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith.
The series has been a proving ground for young drivers trying to make their way into NASCAR. Current drivers in NASCAR who have raced in the CARS Tour include Layne Riggs, Zane Smith, Corey Heim, Josh Berry, Kaden Honeycutt, Brendan Queen, Tristan McKee, Carson Kvapil, Sammy Smith, Todd Gilliland and Connor Zilisch. A CARS Tour race that Earnhardt placed third in at North Wilkesboro in 2022 provided a key proof-of-concept for the historic track to be revived.
Earnhardt, who once won four consecutive Cup Series races at Talladega, will be 52 in October. He last raced in the CARS Tour at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway in the spring where he finished 12th.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. returns to racing in South Carolina
