Dale Earnhardt Jr. opines on leaked 2025 NASCAR schedule

While the likely 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoff schedule was leaked back in July, another schedule leak over the past week generated a lot of attention, and even warranted a NASCAR response.

The official NASCAR Latino account is affiliated with NASCAR but is managed by a third party entity. NASCAR says the leaked schedule is “not entirely accurate.”

Regardless, Dale Earnhardt Jr., speaking on his Dale Jr Download podcast, had some thoughts about both the playoffs and the loss of a date for Richmond Raceway.

For one, he was surprised that World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) in Madison, Illinois outside of St. Louis now gets a playoff date.

“The playoffs are wild. How in the hell did St. Louis end up in the playoffs?” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I would love to know, I’m not … it’s bizarre. It’s fine. I mean there’s no sort of, ‘Oh you don’t deserve this’ kind of vibe, I just wonder how that even happened.”

That Gateway is an independently owned track mot owned by NASCAR or Speedway Motorsports and is getting a playoff date is what surprised the two-time Daytona 500 winner.

“I didn’t think it had a chance of getting in the playoffs ever,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Not ever. It just still feels like it just got here in terms of the Cup Series. And now it’s in the playoffs. So I’m wondering where the, what the reasoning is, what the reasoning is why.”

Earnhardt also didn’t care that Talladega was in the Round of 8, viewing it as fundamentally similar to having it in the Round of 12, where it has been since this format began in 2014.

Then there’s the matter of Richmond Raceway losing a date to make room for what appears to be the much ballyhooed race somewhere in Mexico City, the first intetnational points race in the history of the Cup Series.

Earnhardt just hates that it comes at the expense of a short track, which is a discipline of racing that the current generation of Cup cars has failed to deliver a quality racing product on.

“That’s an unfortunate thing for Richmond but we kind of saw the writing on the wall with the short-track package being as crappy as it’s been over the last handful of years since the NextGen car came on,” Earnhardt added.

And Earnhardt says NASCAR and its third year car has failed a track like Richmond, one of his favorites.

“I’m not going to go easy on that, it’s been terrible. Atrocious,” he said. “You can saw what you want about Richmond, the racetrack, the facility, how they’ve performed in terms of modernizing comparable to other facilities and what kind of draw it might be, but the lousy way that the short-track package has been going for a while is the No. 1 reason why that racetrack doesn’t have two dates.”

When his co-hosts pushed back on that, suggesting that NASCAR has no choice but to cut short tracks, he pushed back on that.

“Fix the package.”

Other Earnhardt takeaways on the leaked schedule focused on the North Wilkesboro All Star Race, Downtown Chicago and Somoma Raceway.

“Wilkesboro’s still an All-Star race, can’t wait to hopefully see a points race there,” Earnhardt said. “I’m ready for the All-Star race to move somewhere else and for Wilkesboro to get a 400-lapper, something like that.

“Chicago’s still there and Sonoma’s moved into a different part of the year, which I think I’ll be doing that,” he said of his 10-race TV schedule with Amazon Prime and TNT Sports. “So (wife) Amy will be happy.”

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