One year has passed since a group of legendary individuals from NASCAR came together to claim ownership of the CARS Tour. Consisting of Dale Earnhardt Jr, Kevin Harvick, Justin Marks, and Jeff Burton, this group has created a profound impact on the popularity and quality graph of the racing series. As the lot prepares for their second season together, they came together at the Charlotte Motor Speedway for a media conference to unveil their calendar and plans for 2024.

Talking to the media at the star-studded event, Dale Jr explained the intricacies of scheduling a calendar and how he managed to do it for the CARS Tour.

Dale Earnhardt Jr talks about the factor he had in mind when drawing the 2024 calendar

With zMAX joining the series as its title sponsor in 2024, the CARS Tour is expected to draw in more drivers from across NASCAR’s top three tiers. The first season provided an intense glimpse of what could be in the future with the likes of Kyle Larson stepping into Dale Jr’s series. Given the massive success, it was obvious that the new calendar had to be scheduled in such a way that it did not collide with the NASCAR calendar to make way for drivers to race in the CARS Tour. Talking to Frontstretch’s Chase Folsom, Dale Jr reflected on the same thought.

Folsom mentioned the scheduling clashes that NASCAR and CARS Tour face during the Coca-Cola 600 and the Darlington weekends, and asked, “When you guys were putting together the schedule how much was correlating with NASCAR a big part?”

Dale Jr replied, “It was very important. We want to try to present opportunities for Truck, Xfinity and Cup drivers to come compete with us as often as possible. That’s not always as easy as it sounds because even when we’re trying to race on a weekend very close to a Cup race, there’s always a practice or something (…) But yeah we want to make, you know, create those opportunities when we can.”

Though the calendar is now affixed, Dale Jr is aware that there is a lot more work to be done before drivers begin flocking around his series.

Dale Earnhardt Jr joins Kevin Harvick in reminiscing over their first-year success

Though it is only their first years as series owners in the CARS Tour, both Dale Jr and Kevin Harvick have been long-term team owners. The former even had his drivers Josh Berry and Carson Kvapil win championships under him. But after taking control of the series, his affinity for it seems to have grown multi-fold.

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Junior told NASCAR, “As someone involved in the series ownership group, it’s never enough, We’re ambitious, and the value of the series is still unrealized. We’ve got a lot of potential with good, quality racing and a lot of great storylines. (…) I wish I could wake up in the morning and work on the CARS Tour until I went to bed every single day of the year.”

Josh Berry who is set to move to the Cup Series team of Stewart-Haas Racing is one of the premier products to come out of the CARS Tour. Like Junior says, the potential and quality are present throughout the racing series. Sharing his strong liking for the tour is his co-owner, Kevin Harvick. Harvick says, “I love the group of guys we work with because it’s a great communicating group who look at things from a much different perspective but also understand that we’re trying to reach the same goal. It’s been a lot of work, but a lot of fun, as well.”

With zMAX getting onboard, two races have been scheduled at the North Wilkesboro track and the tour will also visit Orange County. With the schedule taking full form, we can expect more updates on participating drivers as the season begins on March 2, 2024.

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