In a partnership with 10-time Grammy winner Chris Stapleton, the race team owned by NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. and sister Kelley Earnhardt Miller will enter the Daytona 500 with reigning Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier.
The entry will have engines and support supplied by Hendrick Motorsports and will utilize the No. 40. The program will be overseen by veteran crew chief Greg Ives. Specifically, Stapleton is supporting the effort through his Traveller Whiskey brand.
JR Motorsports is not a chartered team and will have to make the race either through time trials or the qualifying race in the week leading up to the Great American Race. Allgaier has ran the Daytona in 2014 and 2015 with HScott Motorsports finishing 27th and 37th in those two attempts.
Stapleton told the Associated Press that he is a longtime friend of Rick Hendrick, who then connected him with Earnhardt.
“We had this whiskey and I always have ‘pie in the sky’ dream of things to do and we knocked on the door a little bit,” Stapleton told the AP. “If I’m being 100% honest, I just thought it would be cool to see whiskey on a car. And he brought up Dale Jr. and I was like ‘Why wouldn’t we do that if we can?’ This is a lot of my audience, for both whiskey and country music, and what (Earnhardt) does in auto racing.”
This is the only race for now that JRM plans to enter but it does mark a momentous occasion in the history for the sport that its most popular modern figure will own a car in the biggest race.
“I shared with Rick that for a very long time that I had a dream, at one time in my life, of entering the Daytona 500 as a car owner,” Earnhardt told the AP. “Rick presented the opportunity to connect with Chris and his team, they were interested in marketing in our sport, and Rick knew that I was wanting to fulfill this opportunity. It was like two people that wanted the same thing.”
JRM has won 88 times at the second highest level of the sport, the Xfinity Series, with drivers like Allgaier, Chase Elliott, William Byron and Tyler Reddick. This season marks the 24th year of continual operation for the team.
