Dale Earnhardt Jr. Shocked by $50M NASCAR Cost: "Hard for Me to Believe"
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NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. claims that the version of the sport he once knew and grew up with has gone.
Earnhardt Jr. has noted the staggering cost behind fielding a car in the Cup Series, which he explains starts at approximately $50 million to get the charter, arguing that it has "become this place where only people with that kind of money can play."
During an appearance on the Harvick Happy Hour podcast (below), Earnhardt Jr. explained:
"I have been around long enough to remember that if you and I just woke up one day and said, 'Man, we're going to enter a Cup car in any race we want,' we can go find us a car, find us a driver, get all the parts and go do it, right?
Dale Earnhardt Jr. speaks onstage as SiriusXM and Dirty Mo Media broadcast from Daytona Speedway for the 2025 Daytona 500 on February 13, 2025 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. speaks onstage as SiriusXM and Dirty Mo Media broadcast from Daytona Speedway for the 2025 Daytona 500 on February 13, 2025 in Daytona Beach, Florida.for SiriusXM
"Now, there's some couple hoops. You've got to get licensed and got to enter the car, pay the money, the entry fee, all that good stuff. But it was pretty much an understandable challenge.
"Today, to just get out there and compete, you need that $50 million charter, and that charter is going to be $100 million and $150 million and $200 million — it's going to go to the moon over the next several years.
"It was a good time to buy it 10 years ago. I regret that I didn't. But it's become this place where only people with that kind of money can play."
Claiming that it is "hard" for him to believe the changes, Earnhardt Jr. continued:
"The world, the NASCAR that I knew, in terms of just being able to field the car and go race, doesn't exist anymore. That's hard for me to just believe, that we're in that — for me to go run an open car isn't realistic. It's not realistic for anybody to do it every single week."
Despite this, the 50-year-old former driver acknowledges that this is a great position for the sport to be in. He concluded:
"But while that is tough for me to stomach, it is incredibly great for the current people that are involved in the sport. Great for NASCAR, great for the France family, great for the owners and teams that have those charters that are appreciating year after year, hour after hour.
"They're just going up. But for somebody who's trying to get in? You can't play unless you got a big entity behind you. Somebody with real cash."
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