Dale Earnhardt Jr. has heard the rumors the NASCAR is exploring taking the Clash internationally next year with somewhere in Brazil as a potential target but he offered a suggestion for a future race in England.
The two-time Daytona 500 winner turned television analyst and podcaster would be open to a race at Brands Hatch in England but not the track that might immediately come to mind.
“There’s this uh, they absolutely want to race in front of new audiences,” Earnhardt said on his Dale Jr Download podcast. “NASCAR would love to race in Europe or, you see Brazil in the conversation on social media. And if that is something that we are absolutely going to see in the future. Like, I don’t know if I love – I don’t car. I don’t care if my Cup racing goes overseas. I’m not for it or against it. It doesn’t excite me, you know, but I’ll watch it. But I’m not going to be sad if it doesn’t happen. Does that make sense?
“But if they take the Clash overseas, I think that one track that they absolutely should look at is Brands Hatch. The Indy course at Brands Hatch, it’s like a short-track road course. I don’t think, they’re wanting to take the Clash maybe overseas or to some different countries. I think you have to keep it on that short-circuit format. You can’t go to these long mile-and-a-half or two-and-a-half-mile or three-mile road courses and have the Clash. That is not going to be fun. … So, they may have some tracks that exist, some small ovals that exist in some of these countries that they can try to run at.
“But I think Brands Hatch, which it is a road course … It’s like a, I don’t know the distance but it’s like a mile. It’s very, it’s a couple of corners. We’ve ran it online, we’ve run it on our sim race forever.”
