Folks, ever since Dale Earnhardt Jr and Co. bought the CARS Tour in 2023, the series has only grown, like how they recently announced a partnership with FOX. For the folks who don’t know, FS1 will carry live coverage of the CARS LMSC Tour race at North Wilkesboro Speedway in a collaborative effort with FloRacing. This is massive; for such a small series to get the coverage of a veteran broadcaster, that only means one thing: more eyeballs for them. However, amid all this, there has been a little controversy in the recent event, where Dale Earnhardt Jr had to step in and clarify things.
The whole thing is money-related; when a series gets popular, more money flows in as well, essentially creating a give-and-take situation. And after the recent FOX deal, drivers lauded the CARS Tour’s efforts as the teams of the series started getting sponsorship calls – which is another indicator of the Tour’s growth. But recently, the stock car series raced at a new facility, and everything was smooth until some drivers found it too expensive to run the track. Well, Junior explained the high costs.
Why was the testing rate in the CARS Tour so high?
Here’s what happened: The CARS Tour reached the Cordele Motor Speedway. And while everything was great, one aspect made several drivers frustrated. The testing fee at the track was outrageous, and it was mandatory for the teams to clock in for at least 3 hours. And this had Late Model racer Douglas Barnes Jr. call them out on an X post, where he wrote, “Testing today for this weekend’s CARS Tour race. Usually, it’s about $150-200 a day to test, but Cordele is welcoming us with a nice $125 AN HOUR. Thanks for the hospitality @CordeleSpeedway.”
This got many drivers to join in, and it was almost an X feud. Even Dale Earnhardt Jr. joined in with a counter, “I don’t love it. But he’s (Douglas Jr.) acting surprised when his team knew this info and still showed up today to test.” While Junior’s response might seem a bit much, as the prices almost tripled, given there was a mandatory three-hour testing requitement. However, Junior had an explanation for this.
In the recent episode of his Dale Jr Download podcast, he said, “A lot of the tracks that we go to, charge you that same price for maybe the entire day. So, that was a bit of a surprise for our teams and me as well. I wasn’t really, crazy about that, but when you look around the facility itself, I mean, this place was amazing. They had put so much money into it, everything was top-notch— from the bathrooms to the fence to everything. I mean, it was just really a good facility and our teams, I believe, most of them walked away going, “Man, I’d love to come back here, this was great.”
Basically, what Junior is trying to come at is that when a facility is giving you top-notch services, the cost is bound to be high. And even short track veteran Ryan Millington agreed to this when he said, “The testing fee was outrageous… but, I guess that’s what you get to come here and have the cleanest bathrooms we’ve ever had at a track, a beautiful race track, where everything is spotless. I’ve enjoyed being here, and we’ll come back and do it again next year if we have to.”
And this was the first time the Late Model Stock cars went to the track. Also, outside of the race on the Daytona International Speedway backstretch, this is the furthest south that this sub-discipline has raced. And for Junior, this is a positive way forward despite the cost. “We had never raced in Georgia until this weekend, so that was kind of a cool thing to take them down to Cordele. So, uh, it opens up the idea of what we can do going forward— maybe one race per season we try to take our cars just a little further down the road to a new facility we’ve never been to.”
Also, on the other hand, Junior understands that the people racing in the series don’t have a lot of money. “But I’ve got to be realistic about that and not really stress our teams. All these people are blue-collar, they have jobs, and we were not required, but we were kind of encouraged to be there as early as Thursday to practice. So, you feel like if you’re not there and the other teams are, you’re behind.”
And while this whole fiasco makes it seem like the Tour doesn’t care for its drivers, clearly, that’s not the case. As they always put the drivers ahead of everything else. Like the recent announcement about Hickory Motor Speedway.
CARS Tour to have a historic weekend at Hickory
The Throwback 225 at Hickory Motor Speedway is boasting a $200,000 race purse this year, made possible by FloRacing’s generous sponsorship. Here’s the breakdown: the Late Model Stock race offers a $50,000 winner’s payout and $2,500 to start, while the Pro Late Model event will pay $30,000 to win and $1,500 to start. This is a huge boost for the series. In fact, motorsports Journalist Jordan Bianchi called it “the biggest single night in pavement late model racing history.”
And Junior was pumped for his drivers and thanked FloRacing earlier, “Yeah, it’s awesome. Me and Kevin (Harvick) were taking about that today. We are like man its happening. Right? The things that we wanted to see working out. Flo has been a big part of that. Especially the hickory deal with the throwback race of the $200,000 purse. Without Flo it doesn’t happen. Period. So if anybody wants to be happy and thankful. They need to tell Flo.”
While the Tour got some backlash for the Cordele thing, it’s efforts like this that make drivers want to come to the series and race. CARS Tour championship leader and two-time NASCAR Weekly Series National Champion Connor Hall spoke on this. He said, “Yeah, I mean, amazing job by Flo and everybody in CARS Tour to put that together. Without FloRacing, I don’t think this thing would obviously be growing at the rate it is, so I’m super excited to have the opportunity to run for $50,000. It’s obviously a blessing for all our competitors that we have the opportunity to be broadcasted by Flo and have their outreach, so I feel good about going for $50k at Hickory.”
What do you think, folks, about the CARS Tour and how it’s growing? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
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