Racing isn’t just about the bright lights of NASCAR’s big stages. It’s about the dirt tracks, the late-night garage sessions, and the dreamers chasing checkered flags on local ovals. Grassroots racing is the soul of NASCAR, where dreams are built on local tracks. For Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick, the CARS Tour—a late model stock car series rooted in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee—is more than a racing series. It’s a lifeline for young drivers and a piece of racing’s heart they’re determined to protect. Their journey to take over the CARS Tour is a tale of friendship, instinct, and a deep love for the sport that shaped them.

What makes this tale unique isn’t the deal itself—it’s the individuals who negotiated it. Dale Jr., Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, and Justin Marks united to purchase the CARS Tour, motivated by a common desire to save its heritage. Their friendship, developed over years of team ownership, racing, and broadcasting, transformed a casual notion into a mission to expand the series while maintaining its grassroots nature.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. reveals how his CARS Tour partnership started

The CARS Tour began as the Hooters Cup late model series in 1995, founded by Hooters owner Robert Brooks to honor four lives lost in a 1993 plane crash, including his son Mark and 1992 NASCAR champion Alan Kulwicki. It evolved into the USAR Pro Cup Series, introducing a playoff-style Four Champions Challenge in 2001 that inspired NASCAR’s own playoff system.

By 2014, facing declining entries, the series transitioned into the CARS Tour, absorbing the UARA-STARS Tour and focusing on Late Model Stocks and Super Late Models. In 2015, it pioneered asphalt racing with CARS Tour TV, streaming every race online. The tour’s innovative format, including a Pro Late Model Division starting in 2022, has kept it thriving, with car counts averaging 55 per stop. However, in the 2020s, the series owner was looking to take a back seat and sell the series. That’s when the protectors of grassroots racing stepped in.

Recently on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast, Dale Earnhardt Jr. revealed, “Jack (McNelly, former CARS Tour president) was a fellow that owned the tour for a while and was thinking about bringing in partners or selling the tour. He wanted it to kind of live on. He was thinking about getting out or scaling back his involvement. And actually, at the race at North Wilkesboro, when we brought Wilkesboro back in 2022 and had an event there with the CARS Tour and the Modifieds, we started conversations about how to keep the tour going, who should buy it, who should invest in it, who could do it. And I was like, well, I’ll be a partner. I wasn’t ready to run a series. I’ve never done that before in my life.” Dale Jr. and Harvick, who shared laughs in the broadcast booth at Sonoma years ago, now share a vision.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s revival of North Wilkesboro Speedway was a celebrated achievement as it birthed a new location for the Cup Series ‘ All-Star race. However, it is only now that people realize the true impact of that move, as it gave Junior the confidence to buy the series after it started racing at North Wilkesboro again. However, rounding up Justin Marks, Jeff Burton was not the original plan, and things worked out poetically.

First, Dale Jr. pitched his idea to buy the series to Jeff Burton, a Cup Series veteran with over 600 races, and also drove late model stock cars in Boston as a young driver while working on his racecraft. Dale Jr. spoke about how one meeting with Jeff Burton led to all four of them co-owning the CARS Tour. “[Jeff] Burton’s the kind of guy you can tell him things you’re thinking about doing, and he’ll tell you whether it’s a good or bad idea.” So, when Junior approached Burton with his idea, he was surprised to be met with optimism!

Dale Jr. continued, “I didn’t expect for him[Jeff Burton] to get involved in it. He said, ‘Hey, I might wanna do that,’ and then he thought, ‘We should talk to Kevin [Harvick].'” And that’s what started the chain reaction linking all owners together. “We sat down and talked to you [Kevin Harvick] and you were like ‘I’m in, I think we should talk to Justin Marks’. So it kinda like grew into this really cool group of guys.”

Under their leadership, the CARS Tour is flourishing. Events like the upcoming North Wilkesboro race, featuring drivers like Kaden Honeycutt, Donovan Strauss, and Parker Eatmon, highlight the series’ vibrancy. They’re donning multiple hats for their pet project as both veterans will call the race for FOX, bringing their “really stripped-down” broadcast style to fans. “It’s a big damn deal,” Dale Jr. said, hyping their return to the booth for NASCAR’s All-Star weekend. Harvick, ever the competitor, even challenged Dale Jr. to a “broadcast booth rodeo,” promising a lively show.

The tour’s impact goes beyond racing. It’s a development hub, with teams like Hettiger Racing fielding multiple cars and mentors like Rodney Childers helping guide young talent. “Kevin [Harvick] texted me on Monday afternoon, asked me what I was doing this weekend, and asked if I could go over to the shop and help his guys a little bit. They’ve had a rough couple of weeks of ups and downs,” Childers told Frontstretch.com. 

This isn’t about fame or money—it’s about giving back to the tracks, drivers, and fans who keep racing alive. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick are ensuring the CARS Tour remains a home for grassroots racing, proving that the heart of the sport beats strongest where it all began.