As we’ve reached the closing stretch of the 2025 racing season, many in the racing world are already looking towards 2026. NASCAR, Formula 1 and NHRA have released 2026 schedules. There’s plenty of speculation surrounding INDYCAR’s 2026 calendar.
These conversations tend to start with racing’s upper levels, but they typically trickle down the ladder over time. It’s well known that the top levels of dirt racing typically save their schedule announcements for the November-December part of the calendar, but what about the CARS Tour?
While that schedule likely won’t come out for quite some time, it’s never too early to speculate – and it certainly helps when Dale Earnhardt Jr. himself weighs in on the conversation.
After a not-so-great night at Florence Motor Speedway, Earnhardt was happy to look ahead into the future and discuss what changes the Tour might see, even beyond just the tracks on the schedule.
Earnhardt’s Comments
While Earnhardt didn’t give too much insight into tracks in the conversation outside of Florence in particular, he gave key insight into both the schedule’s place within the calendar and how those race nights may look from week to week.
“I think it’d be cool to start the year sooner,” Earnhardt said. “Maybe even see if Steve [Zacharias] here at Florence was interested in turning the IceBreaker into a CARS Tour event. That would start the season if February. We would then be able to remove a race out of the summer.
“What I want to do is race less in the summer, give our teams the opportunity to be with their families, go on vacation, whatever they want to do. And it’s hot. It’s really just difficult to operate in the summer, these days are really tough with practice on Thursday of Friday. We don’t want to increase our races, I think our little footprint of 14, 15 races in the Late Model Stocks is good, the Pros run 13 or so every year.
“Maybe they would run 10? Maybe they would rather run less races for the same amount of money. Then we could introduce another series, do like a three-race, four-race super set of races. There’s all kinds of things that we talk about that might be good ideas.”
The two-time Daytona 500 winner even pointed to the just-completed race as a potential example for future change.
“Tonight would have been a good night to maybe run a 200 lap race,” Earnhardt said. “Is that something our teams would want to do? Where we have a couple events that are just a little different, for strategy and so forth.
“I ask the teams what they want in terms of purse increase, where they would love that increase. Is it at the back? In the middle? Are they all just going to look at what you get paid for first and go there? What is it that gets these guys to come out and compete?”
The Tracks In Question
Earnhardt gave the idea of a more spread-out schedule with potential for format variation within the series, but what tracks might actually make the schedule?
Plenty of facilities want to be on the Tour’s schedule. But as Earnhardt indicated, only 14 or 15 are likely to get the chance. Which those will be is all speculation at this time, as nothing has been confirmed. But context clues can put a lot of things together.
It’s easy to start with the facilities that are safe. Tracks like Hickory Motor Speedway, South Boston Speedway and Langley Speedway, three staples of the Tour, are fan favorites and aren’t going anywhere. With the prestige involved, you can throw in North Wilkesboro Speedway as a track that is certainly safe, although there are plenty of conversations to be had around the track having two dates.
Other tracks that unlikely to be going anywhere include Ace Speedway, Tri-County Speedway, Dominion Raceway and Wake County Speedway. Ace has been a staple on the Tour for quite some time, and is an entertaining and financially-affordable race for the teams in terms of travel. Despite TriCo’s relationship with the South Atlantic Pro Series, the track puts on fantastic racing and the Tour would be silly to leave. Wake packs the house and puts on fantastic racing and Dominion is a class A facility that does quite a bit of charity with the Tour and Mini Tyrrell.
Behind them, you’d have Anderson Motor Speedway and Florence Motor Speedway, the two South Carolina tracks. After the show Anderson put on with Earnhardt in attendance, it’d be pretty head scratching for the return of the track to be a one time thing. Earnhardt himself seems set on finding a place for Florence on the schedule no matter the place on the calendar.
That gives us 10 tracks and possibly 11 dates if North Wilkesboro is granted two. How does the rest fill out?
Starting in the Volunteer State, the Tour seems destined to return to Tennessee with the revival of Newport Speedway, as track owner Chuck Ward all but confirmed that the Tour will make their debut at the Newport high-banks. Of course, the logistics have to be sorted out, but that one seems to be pretty far along the process.
Beyond that, it’s no secret Earnhardt seems set on one race outside the Late Model Stock ‘comfort zone’ so to speak, which was fulfilled by Cordele Motor Speedway earlier this year. All signs seem to be pointing to the Tour not returning to Cordele in 2026, so what track takes its place?
The two most likely seem to be New Smyrna Speedway or Jennerstown Speedway Complex, which happen to be in two completely opposite directions. So which one will it be? New Smyrna to the south, Jennerstown to the north, or even the unlikely Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway to the west?
There were plans in place for the Tour to race at New Smyrna in 2025, but those fell through. Could that plan be worked out for 2026? Earnhardt has personally mentioned Jennerstown multiple times, so will he make the trip to Pennsylvania happen for the teams?
Although a date in New Smyrna’s World Series of Asphalt – held in the lead up to the Daytona 500 in February – would mean the early start to the season Earnhardt is looking for, Jennerstown seems to make more sense for an expansion of the discipline to new markets.
So, those two races get us to 13. As for the final two, it’s really a toss-up. The newly rebranded Coastal Plains Raceway (formerly New River All-American Speedway), Orange County Speedway and Caraway Speedway hold dates from this year. Two of those three likely fill in the blanks, although you could never rule out the return of a track like Southern National Motorsports Park, or even Motor Mile Speedway if Pulaski County gets the track back up and running.
The Schedule Structure
This could be an interesting one. With Earnhardt’s quest to remove races from the summer months, we could see a situation where the Tour almost has two completely separate seasons in the spring and fall, which isn’t the worst idea.
The first wrinkle to straighten out is North Wilkesboro. With NASCAR moving its date in Wilkes County from May to July, a CARS Friday night race would directly conflict with what is historically the date of Langley’s Hampton Heat 200. A move for Hampton Heat could happen, but would mean a likely shift of the Throwback Classic to a new part of the calendar.
In theory, what could happen is Wilkesboro serving as the lone summer race for the Tour, while the other fourteen races are split evenly between the front side and back side of summer. More prestige surrounding North Wilkesboro, a nice summer break for the teams. No fans, drivers or crew members melting dying in the Carolina summer heat. Sounds pretty appealing to all of us.
Not to mention, this would also play in favor of running longer races from time to time. Holding 200-lap races can take a toll on equipment, but a summer break would give the teams time to regroup and bring their best stuff back to the track when fall rolls around. Of course, longer races would typically start earlier in the evening, so avoiding the summer would once again keep everyone out of the heat.
In the end, none of this is set in stone. How much do we really know by reading between the lines? Not that much, so we’ll have to wait until the schedule officially comes out, or Earnhardt drops some more concrete details, to know for sure.
What we do know is that 2026 will be upon us before we know it – and the CARS Tour might have an entirely new schedule when it arrives.
Chase began working with Frontstretch in the spring of 2023 as a news writer, while also helping fill in for other columns as needed. Chase is now the main writer and reporter for Frontstretch.com's CARS Tour coverage, a role which began late in 2023. Aside from racing, some of Chase's other hobbies include time in the outdoors hunting and fishing, and keeping up with all things Philadelphia sports related.