Casey Mears made his return to the NASCAR Cup Series at the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway on March 30, marking his first appearance since the 2019 Daytona 500. Driving the #66 HitchGo Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Garage 66, the race was a special one-off, marking Mears’ 490th start.
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However, his comeback was not as seamless as he would have thought; the team stumbled at the outset, failing pre-race inspections twice, which led to a series of penalties, including his ejection for the weekend and losing their choice of pit stall. The rough start meant Mears and his team had their work cut out to recover during the race.
Despite the adversities, Mears held his own for much of the race. However, challenges continued to mount as mechanical issues plagued his #66 Ford Mustang, struggling with handling and a problem midway through the race, ending in a 36th-place finish, eleven laps behind the leader.
Although he expressed his gratitude for the chance to race again, acknowledging, “I’m happy. I appreciate the opportunity to get to 490 starts,” he conceded, “It was a pretty uphill battle, obviously, Carl’s team is a small team, a small program. They worked… But they just don’t have a lot of stuff that the bigger teams have, so, thinking that the car was going to be close, and we just missed it.”
Mears explained the team’s aggressive approach due to limited track time, which resulted in his car being extremely tight from the get-go.
He elaborated, “It was massive tight, beginning massively tight way way off, and then it’s really big changes the first time. 3 pit stops, I think, and then it kind of got to where it turned better, but we just never really fixed the center. And then I get loose.”
Casey Mears said he had fun and mostly got out of this what he wanted under the restrains of what MBM works with
I asked Casey what joy a guy with his competitive resume gets out of this. pic.twitter.com/f7EjGbys5B
— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) March 30, 2025
Despite the challenges, Mears found transitioning to the Next Gen car manageable, particularly at Martinsville Speedway, where the low speeds mean aerodynamics play a lesser role. Ultimately, he was satisfied with fulfilling his goal of making his 490th start in the Cup Series, and he did that.
Mears is now setting his sights on reaching the milestone of 500 starts and hopes to return to the track soon, though the specifics of the team or venue remain undecided as of now.
Given that his lone NASCAR Cup Series victory came at the Coca-Cola 600 event at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2007, it would be a nostalgic and stirring sight for fans to see him compete again on the same track.
