Dale Earnhardt Jr., part owner of the CARS Tour, competed in the Pro Late Model (PLM) race at Florence Motor Speedway on Friday night. He had raced in the Late Model Stock Car (LMSC) division before but teamed with former crew chief Tony Eury Jr. for the race.
Earnhardt Jr. started fifth in the No. 23 car in the 100-lap race. He worked his way through the field and finished second behind Kaden Honeycutt. After the race, Earnhardt Jr. leaned into Honeycutt’s window and congratulated him in victory lane.
When comparing the two divisions, Earnhardt Jr. said, “It’s completely different race car, and they have completely different set of rules. It’s important to get in there and experience that and understand how we can better serve our competitors on both sides of the Late Model Stock and the Pros. I’m excited. I want to run in the Pros some more. I’m not done running Late Model Stocks either.”
Earnhardt Jr. revealed why he ran the PLM race: “I’m trying to show support, love and care to both sides.”
The Late Model Stock has always been our feature class for all these years, but the Pros are rivaling it.”
On the LMSC, Earnhardt Jr. said, “I feel like where we are with Late Model Stocks is peak.”
He pointed to the depth of the field: “[Carson Loftin] won at Anderson, was running 20th all night. This is how competitive the field is.”
On the PLM, Earnhardt Jr. said, “The Pros has a ton of ceiling that we’re not quite close to yet. We can grow our car count. There’s pros all over the country and we want to draw more cars to race with us and there’s a lot of opportunity to do that.”
In the LMSC race, the CARS Tour was able to drew some NASCAR Cup Series drivers with Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen driving Red Bull cars.
On the collaboration between Florence and Darlington, Earnhardt Jr. said, “It’s easy to do on the Florence weekend because of Darlington in here. Darlington and Florence don’t really work together as well as I wish they could on tickets and all kinds of things they could do together. As long as we race at Florence for this weekend, we’re going to try our ass off to bring some of that NASCAR flare over here like we did tonight. I think the tracks are eager to get together, but they just never will sit down and say let’s get creative. But we’re working our asses off at the series right to bring cool stuff to every track like we did this weekend.”
