Dale Earnhardt Jr. has enjoyed a lot of success with B. (Barry) Hoover at his side.
We’re talking about both NASCAR Xfinity Series championships and some incredible seasons at Dale Earnhardt Inc. in the old Budweiser No. 8 car — including an emotional Daytona 500 triumph in 2004.
Hoover was there when Earnhardt Jr. came back to Daytona in July 2001 and ‘kicked their asses’ in the first race back since losing his dad that February.
They’ve done a lot of wonderful things together across multiple levels but ‘B’ says this past week and JR Motorsports making its debut in the Great American Race with Justin Allgaier was the most meaningful experience of his career.
“I think it’s because we might have missed the show, that’s what made it more special,” said Hoover, serving as car chief alongside veteran crew chief Greg Ives. “We came down here, thinking we were going to get in on Wednesday night and it didn’t happen.”
Hoover is referring to the reality that the No. 40 was an open car without a charter and could only make the race through time trials or a qualifying race. They just narrowly missed it on speed but ultimately raced their way in through a Daytona Duel.
“We had to go to work and Greg led this group and made this car faster and that made it more special,” Hoover said. “I know I’ve won a lot down here, but every time you win you just feed off that and the next one’s better and the next one’s better.
“But this was a special week for me. I know I’m winding down on my career, traveling and this place has just been so special to me over the years.”
Earnhardt recognized that from one of his oldest, dearest friends too.
“It’s tough to compare this to winning here or any of the success that we’ve had,” Earnhardt said. “But B, he was with me since the AC Delco car days and he said this is the most fun he’s ever had in this garage. I told him, ‘man, we’ve stood in Victory Lane together’ and he said it was just different.
“I understand what he means. It’s just different. It’s not better or anything else. It’s just different. This was almost like a volunteer group of people that we pulled. We took some young people from our shop that deserved a chance and we pulled some veterans out of the rafters, and people that have been off the road and done some other things and made the Daytona 500.”
They finished ninth, in fact.
Hoover said Chad Knaus first told him about the concept and before even talking to Earnhardt, wanted to know if it would be a ‘top notch’ effort. That’s why they were asking him to be part of it. Next came Ives, a now retired full-time Cup Series crew chief, and that’s all B needed to know.
“I got everything I wanted out of this and more,” Hoover said. “Being Greg’s car chief, I learned so much and he gave me so much knowledge over the past five days that I get to carry with me as long as I do this.
“He taught us perfection. Greg didn’t come down here to run second. He came here to run first. I knew that and that’s why I signed up. I came here to win the race. We didn’t but that’s why we all signed up.”
Ives also previously crew chief’ed Earnhardt Jr. so there was a lot of heart, soul and collective tissue built into this No. 40 car.
“It was fun to get this gang, and a lot of these gangs back together,” Earnhardt said. “Everyone did a good job even though there was no routine. It doesn’t compare to our championship at all but it was so rewarding.
“If you’re a competitor, it does make you want to come back and finish the job, finish better than ninth. We want to but now we have to see if we get that chance.”
That’s the millions and millions of dollars question.
This effort only came to fruition because country music star Chris Stapleton had an idea and brought it to Hendrick Motorsports. However, Rick Hendrick was up against a four-car limit and offered it to the Earnhardts and JR Motorsports instead.
By every metric, the past week was a success. The car was competitive and the sponsorship activation could not have been executed any better.
It was a snapshot of what this could look like as a full-time program.
“Yeah, yeah. I want to be here and I think Kelley (sister and co-owner) wants to be here and I think we can be successful here,” Earnhardt said. “I think with the new charter model it’s more economical to be here. And so I feel like with our ability to draw interest in terms of sponsorship and support, it’s an economical model for us with the new charter agreement.
“And I feel like that the charters will continue to increase in value, so if there’s somebody that watches what we’re doing here that’s not involved in the sport but would invest, we would be a good partner to consider because we know we have a good business model in the Xfinity Series. We know we have the ability to bring sponsor interest to our teams to be able to help fund our operation.
“But I think the overall hurdle is the initial investment in a charter, and I can put some money in but I will not, even if I had it, I would not buy the entire thing myself. So I can’t risk my kids’ inheritance and future on some idea, right, of my own.
“That’s a selfish thing. But I would certainly want to be an investor in any charter that we would be involved in. The charters, though, I think are at the value now where you almost have to have partners to get in if you’re somebody like myself.
“But we’ll see. I told Kelly that this could create some new conversations with people we haven’t had conversations with yet. We’ve been on the phone and at the table with other people that were interested in investing in charters that didn’t work out. But we could have some brand new conversations, so you just wait and see. If it’s meant to be it’ll happen.”
But it’s more complicated than that and Earnhardt isn’t unaware of those challenges either.
To a certain degree, the Earnhardts feel like they missed an opportunity to invest in a charter when they had the chance early in the process but were too risk-averse to make the purchase. Now, charters are being sold for tens of millions of dollars and that’s before factoring in the cost of competition. It’s also hard to predict when a charter might once again hit the open market.
Current Cup Series teams are also having to partner with private equity investors and that means giving up a degree of control in the day-to-day operations. Earnhardt Jr. has made clear that any version of a Cup Series JR Motorsports effort would need to come with a partner investor but also one that allows Dale and Kelley to steer the ship.
“Any kind of Cup operation that I would be involved in, I would want to run it out of my shop and hire people under the JR Motorsports banner,” Earnhardt said. “I wouldn’t want to put a couple of million dollars into someone else’s operations just to get a percentage of a charter.”
But again, when private equity money or big investors get involved, that sometimes comes with having to give up a degree of control. Earnhardt says he is willing to make certain concessions but that JR Motorsports is also looking to partner with someone that recognizes the success they’ve had in the Xfinity Series and see the potential of scaling that up to the Cup Series.
“We could make compromises,” Earnhardt said. “But what Kelley and I, L.W (Miller, Kelley’s husband and team executive) all believe is that someone has seen what we’ve done, both on the competition side and activation, and would invest in us because they believe in what we’re doing — that they believe we can move up to this level and be successful at it.
“We would also hope that the investor would bring some ideas to the table as well. But in terms of operating a race team, we feel like we have a pretty good idea of how to do that and would want to be in control of most of the major decisions when it comes to hiring the right people and putting them in the right places. We’ve proven we know how to do that.
“So I think you just take that same method, we would just multiply the bodies and keep the same mentality and effort going forward. There’s always compromise right? If someone comes in, and they’re spending a lot of money, they’re going to want to make sure things are being done the right way.”
Earnhardt said finding the right partner who checks all those boxes is paramount.
“We’re going to be together for decades, right,” he said. “We have to feel good about this. It has to be the right people.”
But there is one thing that is certain. If the Earnhardts go Cup racing, B. Hoover is going to be a part of it. He says it’s the only thing left to do in this journey they’ve all been on together.
“We stood on pit road after the race, and Junior says, ‘what are we going to do next,’ and I said ‘I want us to win a Cup Series championship.’ I’ve done the Busch Series championship and Daytona 500. I told him I want to stand on the center stage with him one way or the other before I get out of this business, before I get run off.
“That’s our next big thing but I do hope we get to do a few more of these. I enjoyed it. We’ll have to see what comes next.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.