Dale Earnhardt Jr and Kyle Busch might be good friends now, but they had one of the most heated rivalries during the late 2000s and the early 2010s. Things escalated so much that Rowdy even received death threats from some of Junior’s fans after an infamous incident at Richmond back in 2008. There’s a lot of respect between the two now as the 2-time Xfinity Series champion referred to his one-time rival as one of the best NASCAR drivers in the past decade, but he still wants to beat him.
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Junior spoke about Busch on a recent episode of The Rich Eisen Show but the conversation was about NASCAR’s latest endeavor to have an in-season tournament. The regular season can get quite boring for some people and the organizers need something to keep the excitement running.
So the promotion took a page out of the NBA’s book to create this competition where drivers would compete head-to-head against the one that finishes higher than them. When asked who Junior would like to race head-to-head against, he uttered Rowdy’s name.
“I think he can appreciate this, it’ll definitely be Kyle Busch. Me and Kyle had quite a rivalry going back in the day and I have to admit, he’s one of the best drivers the sport has seen in the last 10, 20 years,” he said.
💻 @DaleJr
The In-Season Tournament is coming to @NASCAR and it sounds absolutely awesome — NCAA bracket-style challenge for 5 races!#NASCAR @PrimeVideo pic.twitter.com/llUNA1u4QH
— Rich Eisen Show (@RichEisenShow) May 14, 2024
What are NASCAR’s plans for an in-season competition in 2025?
This in-season tournament will begin from 2025 along with the new TV rights deal and it will be during the races aired by TNT Sports. A total of 32 drivers will be eligible to compete. The order will be determined according to the results of the last three races aired by Prime Video.
Additionally, the competition will take place in a bracket-style system. The competition will take place over five races and the drivers will battle head-to-head against the ones that finish ahead of them in the previous race.
The drivers will advance over these five races to the latter stages of the competition. Finally, only two of them will be pitted against each other for a shot to win the $1 million prize. An in-season tournament did wonders for the NBA earlier and it will be interesting to see if NASCAR also benefits from this.
