Casey Mears Details NASCAR Return in Quest For 500 Cup Starts

The 2025 Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway on March 30 featured an unlikely return for a driver that hadn’t made a NASCAR Cup Series start in more than six years.

The driver in question?

2007 Coca-Cola 600 winner Casey Mears.

Full-time in the Cup Series for 14 seasons, Mears had run one Cup race — the 2019 Daytona 500 — after the conclusion of his last full-time Cup season in 2016. Mears, now 47, is back for 2025 in pursuit of a coveted milestone: 500 career Cup starts.

Martinsville marked Mears’ 490th start, leaving him 10 starts shy of his ultimate goal. Driving for Garage 66, Mears started 37th and finished 35th, 11 laps down, in the 38-car field.

Frontstretch had the opportunity to interview Mears via Zoom on April 3 to discuss his day at Martinsville, his return to Cup and how the deal came about. The interview also discusses what Mears has been up to in recent years as well as his thoughts on the Next Gen car, the Charter system and the state of NASCAR today.

Below are select quotes from the interview. The full interview will be available to listen to on Thursday’s (April 24) Bringing the Heat podcast on the Frontstretch Podcast Network. You can find it on the Frontstretch website, Spotify, Apple Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephen Stumpf, Frontstretch: What have you been doing in the last couple of years, before you came back to NASCAR?

Casey Mears: The majority of the things that I’ve been doing is just spending time with my family, and my son plays baseball. My daughter is in competitive cheer. …

We dabbled in investing into building a spec home in Paradise Valley, which was fun, and I enjoyed that process. But at the same time, I would periodically do some races.

Mears’ races since his full-time retirement have included a Pro-Am style race at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, a celebrity-pro race in Mexico City, starts in the Stadium Super Truck Series and the Baja 1000.

Stumpf: It’s clear that you still live and breathe racing. Even when you’re not racing, I’m guessing you still tune in to watch as many races as you can. Is that the case?

Mears: When I’m at home and sitting around, I definitely tune in and check out the races. I’m at a lot of baseball tournaments these days and cheer competitions, so we ended up being tied up and kind of busy. But definitely, if I’m at home, I’m going to throw the race on. Or when we happen to go somewhere to eat, and it’s a bar-style restaurant, I’m asking them to change a channel to the race for that weekend. And keeping up, I’m not as diligently as I did back when I ran, but I still definitely enjoy watching the races and seeing how everything transpires.

Stumpf: Martinsville is your 490th Cup start. You’re now chasing 500. How did the deal with Garage 66 come about? Was there anything in particular that gave you the decision to want to chase 500?

Mears: When I was at the [January 2023] test in Phoenix when Jimmie Johnson was running. He was in IndyCar for a couple years, and when he was coming back to run stock cars again, the test that they asked to let him do was in Phoenix. I happened to be there, so I drove out there and was supporting him and his test and seeing how things go, and I just wanted to be around.

A reporter came up to me and started asking me about what I thought about the new car. And he started off the conversation by saying, ‘Man, you’ve been around for a while. You ran a lot of Cup races; you have 489 starts.’ And I didn’t think much of it. But then as I was walking away, or even driving home later that night, it kind of dawned on me. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s really close to 500.’

I’ve never really paid attention to my stats, clearly, because if I would have paid attention to those stats, I might have been trying to chase this maybe eight or 10 years ago. But it’s been fun coming back here, and getting to run at Martinsville was a really, really good time.

What happened was, I started talking to Doug Barnett, who’s been a good friend. We worked together in the Germain GEICO scenario for a lot of years. He’s always been trying every year — really since I haven’t been in the sport — he’s always been trying to put a little something together here and there. Maybe we can go run a race, whether it be a Truck race or Xfinity deal, and it’s just never really translated into anything happening. And I think partially part of that is because I took off and moved to Arizona and got away from the heart of where all this stuff is.

But then [Doug] happened to have a conversation with Carl [Long]. He’s like, ‘maybe you should get on the phone and talk, you know.’ So, Carl and I got on the phone, and shoot, I think we ended up talking on the phone for over an hour, just started BS-ing about old times. Carl was racing in the Cup Series when I was first starting to race there, and he’s always been around in some way or fashion since then. And we started on the conversation, and he said, ‘Hey, I hear you want to get these starts.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to get back and do it.’ And he goes, ‘Would you be interested in driving my car?’ And I said, ‘Sure. I think that’d be a lot of fun to go try to do that.’ …

He made a few phone calls, and week later, he called me back and said ‘Man, we’re good for Martinsville.’ I said, ‘Great, I’ll do it. Let’s make it happen.’

It’s been a good thing. I think the odds of us running good in that scenario were going to be pretty difficult, between him just being a super small program and no simulation, no engineers to speak of. He has his own engine program, which he knows is a little down on power, but for what we were trying to do, to try to check that box and get another race to get closer to 500 starts, it was perfect.

We had a lot of good response. It was great to be in front of the fans. Couldn’t believe the number of fans that showed up for the race in support of me and what I used to do, and fans that came from all over to come check it out and a lot of familiar faces. It was really cool to see. And then just seeing everybody in the garage again and being in the mix was a lot of fun.

The on-track stuff was difficult. We didn’t run well; the car was super tight. We were down on horsepower, but they made some really big swings at it and got the car a little bit better throughout the race. And then we ended up having a left-front flat, which tore up the inside of the fender well, and there was a bigger piece of carbon that was rubbing on the left front fender from there on out that we couldn’t really see from the outside. But as soon as they pull the hood up, we can see why the left rear tire kept wanting to lock up.

It was a struggle, but we finished and ran all the laps. It was great for me to get those kinds of laps under my belt. And hopefully we can put the rest of the races together.

Stumpf: You have any set races planned with Carl and Garage 66? Are you guys working on it? And are there any tracks in particular that you’d like to try and get something together?

Mears: There’s nothing set in place yet. There’s some interest from sponsors. Carl would definitely like to do something again. And obviously, I made it known that I want to get to that 500th start. So I’ve just put word out to everybody that I’d love any opportunity that could come available, I love to be a part of it. And at the same time working with Carl and putting some stuff together as well.

But we don’t have anything set in place. It’s an interesting landscape right now, with the charter program. And you know what cars are available, you know what teams can even facilitate doing some of these races part-time. I think one big factor is that, obviously, the charter programs get a fair amount more prize money than the uncharted programs. So a little guy like Carl, or even a third or fourth [open] team within the race team organizations, when they go to run those cars, it’s more expensive than it is to run a charter car. So that’s changed the landscape a lot.

So when you’re a one-off deal and you’re trying to put something together, it’s really hard to explain to a sponsor that doing it in this fashion is more expensive than if you’re with a full-time program, so navigating all that is a bit difficult. But the fortunate thing is we do have people that are interested and want to be involved, and hopefully we can piece that together.

Two weeks before his Martinsville return, Mears revealed that due to his time out of NASCAR, he wasn’t cleared to return to superspeedways or tracks longer than 1.5 miles. By making the start at Martinsville, he should be cleared to compete at any type of track in his quest for 500 starts, including the biggest race of them all.

Stumpf: Once you do get approved, I imagine that the 2026 Daytona 500 — trying to get a ride there — that would probably be a priority, right?

Mears: Yeah, that would be amazing. I mean, we all know that obviously the Daytona 500 is the biggest race that NASCAR has all season long, and I’d love to be a part of that; It’s an amazing experience. And what better way if I could put — but the timing of this may not even remotely work out — get another nine races under my belt this season and get my 500th start for the Daytona 500, that’d be pretty amazing.

But we also know the challenges of that. The odds of me going there to Daytona with a car that has points and is inside the charter program where you lock in is pretty small. So to go to Daytona in that scenario, I’d want to make sure that I was with a really good program that has a strong motor, has everything they need to really go and try to qualify in on speed. And then if not, having the best piece you can have to make a show. So, yeah, I’d love to make that happen if it was a possibility.