NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. has opened up on North Wilkesboro Speedway and why tracks like it are so important to the sport.

After hosting the All-Star Race exhibition in 2025, North Wilkesboro is set to host a point-paying Cup Series race for the first time in 30 years this Sunday, and Earnhardt Jr. has played a crucial role in its resurrection.

It all started with Earnhardt Jr. pushing for an iRacing scan of the track that had hosted Cup Series action until 1996, with him and others having cleaned it up and de-weeded it in order to do so.

Then, when the pandemic struck in 2020, NASCAR turned to iRacing to keep fans engaged during lockdown, with North Wilkesboro chosen as one of the venues for the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series.

Earnhardt Jr. and a host of other stars competed in the virtual race, helping showcase the historic track to a new generation and fuel calls for its return to the schedule. In 2023, NASCAR returned to the track with the All-Star Race exhibition and did so again in 2024 and 2025, before announcing a full points-paying Cup Series race for 2026.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. on North Wilkesboro importance

Now, speaking to The Athletic ahead of this weekend's action in North Carolina, Earnhardt Jr. has opened up on why the track is so important to him and the sport.

"It’s not so much Wilkesboro; it’s the vintage atmosphere and what being at a race at Wilkesboro feels like," Earnhardt Jr. explained.

"It’s the experience that you get when you’re at Wilkesboro. It’s short track racing, which we have sort of abandoned in a lot of areas of our industry. … We’ve lost that. And I’ve talked to [NASCAR CEO] Steve O’Donnell and they’re anxious to sort of reestablish what’s been lost there and what’s eroded away."

Earnhardt Jr. continued, offering his verdict on how important it is to have short tracks on the NASCAR schedule regularly.

"I just feel like NASCAR Cup Series racing is a five-star dish and the perfect recipe has all the right ingredients," he said.

"And we’ve been missing a little bit of what short tracks deliver for our series and our sport to be as healthy as it possibly can be and for that dish to be perfect.

"What is the right combination of short tracks, intermediates, road courses? That’s debatable, and everybody’s got a different opinion."

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