Dale Earnhardt Jr. Names the Responsible Parties Integral for NASCAR’s Growth

NASCAR has a problem. Over a number of years, the sport’s viewership has been on a gradual decline. There have been a few races that have seen that number shoot up but on average, things are not looking good. One of the reasons could be the lack of star power in today’s field. The ’90s and early 2000s were a profitable era for the sport. Heavyweights like Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Labonte, and Jeff Gordon drew a lot of eyeballs to the sport. But things have changed since then and Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently gave his two cents on the matter.

Denny Hamlin addressed this issue on an earlier episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast. Responding to Jeff Gordon’s comments of him being too controversial, the #11 driver said that it is that kind of mentality that is stunting NASCAR’s growth. The 42-year-old also said that the current crop of drivers have star power but are often held back by their teams.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. outlines what NASCAR needs to do to get eyeballs

On a recent episode of The Dale Jr. Download podcast, the former Cup Series driver mentioned the parties responsible for enhancing popularity and star power. In a world where Formula 1 has taken over as the biggest motorsports competition in the world, NASCAR has struggled to keep up.

“In my mind, the responsibility for creating star power rests on Corporate America and NASCAR. The teams have a responsibility to activate on opportunity, to take advantage of opportunity,” the former Cup Series driver said.

NASCAR might not be the biggest motorsports body in the world but it certainly is well-known. People may not watch the racing action but every motorsports fan has heard NASCAR’s name. According to Dale Earnhardt Jr., the company should take advantage of that to propagate its product around the world.

Junior also said that the race team’s PR heads also have a big responsibility in ensuring that they build their drivers’ star power. That includes calling potential sponsors to hook up a sweet deal with.

“It’s NASCAR’s role to utilize its leverage and its strength in the world and also whatever corporate sponsors that you have that may have the same connections or leverage and it’s your team, your PR team, your race team,” Junior said.

“Whoever is working for your race team that’s paired up with whatever driver that person’s got to be active, got to be eager and at times cold calling people, trying to see if there’s interest to have that driver be a part of something. And it’s absolutely gotta be outside of the box,” he added.

While marketing drivers isn’t a bad idea, there are a lot of people who believe that it is just not worth it. One such person is RFK Racing co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski.

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Cup Series team owner stands against investing in drivers

In an interview earlier this season, Keselowski revealed that investing in a driver in today’s day and age is a big risk for a team. They have to invest a lot of time, money, and effort in the driver and if they decide to leave the team afterward, it would have all been for naught.

“If that driver leaves and goes to another team, that’s just a complete loss,” Keselowski explained as per Racing America, adding, “That’s my way of saying that we’re not fully aligned, at this time as a sport to fully capitalize on driver star power. And because we’re not aligned that creates a lack of really true incentives and we’re not getting enough movement there. But I think it’s really important that we create some kind of system that connects all of this.”

Right now, it is difficult to pinpoint what is feasible for both teams and drivers which would help NASCAR grow. People have a lot of opinions but that one common ground is yet to be found. It will be interesting to see how NASCAR goes about marketing its product in 2024.

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