“I’m Frustrated”- Despite $400 Million Net Worth Tag, Dale Earnhardt Jr Reveals His Only “Cheaper” NASCAR Miss

For Dale Earnhardt Jr, there’s perhaps nothing greater than the feeling of being a team owner at JR Motorsports. With that said, Dale Earnhardt Inc. was the perfect Cup Series team for Junior to lead in the future, if not for how things tragically unfolded. But now that the veteran is estimated to be worth upwards of $400 million, what’s standing in the way of Earnhardt Jr from picking up a Cup Series charter shortly?

As the negotiations between teams and NASCAR over the charter agreement heat up, Dale Earnhardt Jr spilled the beans of a major regret that seems difficult to fix. With the price of a charter increasing each season, fans of the JR Motorsports boss may need to wait indefinitely before they can witness JRM’s full-time Cup Series entry.

“There’s no way” – Dale Earnhardt Jr reveals heartbreaking news about JRM’s Cup Series future

Hailing from one of NASCAR’s greatest legacies, Dale Earnhardt Jr has not only made quite the name for himself, but he has also racked up quite the net worth. With around $400 million in assets (reportedly), one would think it wouldn’t be too difficult for Earnhardt Jr to get a charter. But the problem is twofold. First, Earnhardt Jr pointed out the grim reality of the ever-increasing costs of owning a Cup charter.

He shared on the Dale Jr Download“Look, man, I’m frustrated that I, I don’t know man, it’s tough. There’s a lot there, Andrew, I wish I had been smart enough to buy a charter when they were cheaper. That’s the first thing I want to say because I know anything I say after this, people are gonna go, “Well you had a shot, you had the chance. You missed your chance bud, it’s over..” and I did.”

The last team to purchase a charter was Spire Motorsports, and according to reports, the team paid a whopping $40 million for the same. That’d be a good chunk of Junior’s reserves, making it a tough proposition in the current climate. He added, “There’s no way at the current selling price that I personally am gonna go out and buy a charter myself.”

But that’s not all. Similar to many other team owners, Junior believes it is essential for a NASCAR team to be able to own the charter permanently. In theory, this would incentivize teams and sponsors to invest more in the sport seeing the security it provides. That said, Junior made his demands clear. He stated, “If I had a charter today, I would want that. If I owned a charter, and had one right now, on this table, I would want it on it forever.”

Although Dale Earnhardt Jr might have missed out on the opportunity to purchase a charter, the JR Motorsports owner may have dodged a bullet in the long term.

Junior couldn’t help but share his doubts over NASCAR’s future

As things stand, the charter teams receiving permanent status is out of the question for NASCAR executives. Although Steve O’Donnell believes that an agreement is ‘close’, team owners such as Denny Hamlin have stepped forward to dismiss those claims. Naturally, with animosity building between the sport’s officials and the team stakeholders, Junior believes this could be a recipe for disaster.

Now that NASCAR is aiming to expand its financial returns and overall market reach, could things perhaps be moving too quickly? Junior shared his opinion on the DJD, “I’m also a traditionalist in that I am nervous and apprehensive about the direction that we’re going: Where the barrier of entry for somebody to compete at this level, or as an owner, is going to be more challenging, financially, maybe, right?”

Despite Junior voicing his support for the ‘sport prospering, making money, doing great’, some things just aren’t sitting well with the JR Motorsports boss. He concluded, “Hey man, I’d like to see that happen at a nice slow pace. All of the change that is coming in, I’m just like, fighting against some of that internally.”

After taking a look at Dale Earnhardt Jr’s gloomy intuition about the sport’s future, do you think that the sport is headed toward an unfortunate future?