JR Motorsports will field a Daytona 500 car for Justin Allgaier, but future Cup plans are TBD

JR Motorsports competes in NASCAR Cup Series races. At least for a weekend.

As JRM attempts the 2025 Daytona 500 with Justin Allgaier, the biggest question is whether it will make the organization want to race full-time in the Cup Series.

“I don’t want to do it any more than I want to do it now,” team co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. told FOX Sports in an interview Wednesday. “I always wanted to do it.”

But Earnhardt was quick to point out that the 2025 Daytona 500 qualifying attempt is not part of a grand plan to move the Xfinity Series powerhouse to full-time Cup racing. The opportunity arose when singer Chris Stapleton wanted to sponsor a Daytona 500 car to promote his Traveler Whiskey.

“I don’t know if we ever had plans to do the 2025 Daytona 500,” Earnhardt said. “Chris and his team came to us with an idea, and that’s how things work out sometimes.

“There is no conversation or plan beyond the Daytona race, but as we always have been, we have been open to opportunities and possibilities. It has to make sense.”

Stapleton is friends with Cup team owner Rick Hendrick, who turned him on to JR Motorsports (Hendrick is a co-owner of JRM) while also offering the services of former Cup crew chief, Greg Ives, to lead the effort. JR Motorsports will field the No. 40 (to match the No. 40 blend in product).

“I always thought it would be cool that if I had something like a whiskey, we could have it on a car,” Statpleton said. “MH called me and said, ‘Dale Jr. is thinking about building a car for the Daytona 500. Would you be interested?'”

Allgaier, the reigning Xfinity Series champion, will have to qualify for the Daytona 500 in one of the four open spots and should feel confident as Ives has been the crew chief for several of Hendrick’s qualifying efforts at Daytona. There should be at least eight cars vying for the four available spots.

“Justin winning the championship, it’s kind of a continuation of that celebration,” Earnhardt said.

Allgaier, who has 82 Cup starts – including two in the Daytona 500 – was a little surprised to get the call.

“When we sat down in the office and they started describing the plan and what they were going to do, I didn’t expect to be the one they asked to drive it,” Allgaier said.

“I felt like, because I had been there so long, they were just telling me what they were going to do before they announced it.”

Team co-owner Kelley Earnhardt-Miller, who runs the team’s day-to-day operations, emphasized that this is currently a one-race effort for JRM. They want to do a good job on the track and on the marketing side and they will go from there.

“I’m excited because we get to experience it,” Earnhardt-Miller said. “And then it just gives us one more experience in our bucket that we can hope for and say, ‘OK, how could we make this happen again? Or do we want this to happen in a full-time situation ?’

“I’ve been riding the charter wave for several years, obviously, with the conversations, and I’m sitting back and waiting to see how things develop and what the opportunities look like.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He spent decades covering motorsports, including more than 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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