NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 7, 2026

Dale Earnhardt

Eric Warren

Andrew Overstreet

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now with two members of our championship-winning team, the VP of global motorsports competition for GM, Dr. Eric Warren, he's the champion manufacturer tonight, and then the owner of JR Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

We'll open it up right to questions.

Q. Dale, when you see Justin riding the wall in those last 20 laps or so, we could tell your voice was getting a little bit antsy. Talk about your emotions watching him do that.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, I was pretty worried about it. We had the flat and got really lucky that that didn't make our night much more challenging than it already did.

I was on channel two, Justin couldn't really hear me. I was hammering the spotter to dial him back. I don't really know exactly what's okay to say and what's not okay to say on the radio. Is it okay to say, You got 14 points to play with here. I didn't even want to put that out into the universe.

I was like, Hey, you got to tell him to chill. Because I saw him, it was 25 or so, 20 to go, and I saw ticky-tacking around against the wall in three and four. Man, we don't need to be doing that because we are 15 to the good here.

Yeah, I was on the channel two trying to be assertive.

That's what is amazing racing here, to be fast you got to run right on it. To run right on it is a risk every single time you go into a corner.

I went up to Rajah and Carson, I probably would have said this to all four of them, but it was actually the only two I saw before they got in the car. I said, I'll give you 10 grand if you don't hit the wall and you run in the top 10. I might have to pay Carson the 10 grand, but Rajah didn't get it tonight.

It's a challenge. Every time we race here, I'm like, Keep the right-side tires on it. If you hit the wall, you're going to knock a tire off of it. You can't have that mistake here. You got to be good enough to run right on it all night long without making any mistakes.

Q. Dale, at this point of Justin's career, what does a second championship do for him?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I don't know. Great question for him when he comes in here.

I would say that he feels like he's missed on some opportunities to win multiple championships. It's nice to kind of start to put some in the basket. He's talked about his career, how much longer he's going to race.

It's nice to get more than one, kind of certify the career he's had, adds some credibility to it. I'm just thankful that we had this format. It gave us a real better understanding of kind of what our goal was, what our job was every race and every weekend.

This felt good to win it in this style of format. I didn't know if we'd ever get that chance. Some people may like the old one. I like this one. It's just fun to race this way and go through the night like we did.

I would say that when we were in Phoenix, I was miserable every one of those, just miserable. You just didn't know what was going to happen. You hoped at the end of the night you were the chosen one.

Tonight I feel like we were in control, we could win it or lose it. Man, that was so fun. It was fun to race and fun to duke it out, run hard for 10 races and see what happened.

I think Justin having won a championship under both formats, got to be pretty neat part of the storyline, as well.

DR. ERIC WARREN: And the year he had.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Just incredible year. We didn't pack them close for Tuesday night for nothing. We have to go unpack that (smiling).

Q. Eric, when you look at the way this season has progressed for Chevy, you missed out on the Manufacturers' Championship in Cup and Truck, but you get it in O'Reilly. How do you look back at this season as a whole when you think about the domination in this series, some of the early struggles with the new Chevy body on the Cup side?

DR. ERIC WARREN: We won I think the last five or six Manufacturers' Championships in a row. Toyota did a great job. Honestly, you got to give it to them.

The great thing about the season and the format is you got to end it. So seeing Kyle's domination in Cup, obviously we got another race to go, a lot of work to do.

Looking at Justin and JR Motorsports this year with the number of wins, I think we had 29 wins. What a great series, what a great championship. Looking at the final race, I mean, couldn't really be more proud of that.

It's tough to win every single year, so...

The new car, we started in 2020 with the new car. Very similar ending. Then we won 21 races the next year. Every year brings something different. I really applaud how everybody's been working on it. Hopefully we finish it.

THE MODERATOR: We're also joined by the championship-winning crew chief, Andrew Overstreet.

We'll continue with questions.

Q. After Vegas, there were three bad finishes already in the first four races. It felt like Justin's Chase was becoming kind of like Denny-ish. Dale, were you ever at that point feeling like, yeah, maybe it's not meant to be this year, the way things were going?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I never felt that way. I did feel some type of way about having such a great regular season and feeling like we're in a great spot.

I'll be honest, I think doing the podcast, looking at the points every week, I was really surprised at what a good and bad day could do to the running order there in the top 10. We saw that on the Cup side all year long.

Just when we felt like we understood how much weight a win carries and how much weight a bad finish carried, we would be surprised again how one person could make up a chunk of points over everybody else.

I still, like, going into this race, didn't know how to feel about our chance, even with the little bit of lead that we had. But I do like the system. I feel like it rewards the right things. Of course, it's easy to say sitting here in this chair.

I do enjoy that system much more than the previous one. I feel like it's in your hands. It's in your hands more. You're not setting yourself up for this sort of one-race lottery chance opportunity. You're judged on those 10 races. That's enough. That's enough sample size for me.

We see how teams ebb and flow throughout the season, especially in the Cup Series. I don't see it quite as much in the O'Reilly Series. You have a team that's streaky at the beginning of the year, great in the summer, then a different team is better at the end of the year. You can't ever count anybody out.

I think it's a good sample size to crown the champion. I think the way they set it up from 1st to 10th in terms of points, the detriment to -- sorry, 16th or whatever, the detriment to not being in that top three or top six is pretty big. Hard to overcome.

I was a little surprised by their look. But that's racing. We had some great moments. There were some really, really great moments throughout this Chase that a lot of people didn't recognize that were good moments for us that I'll never forget.

Q. Dale, I want to ask you about Carson Kvapil. Several near wins, really started becoming a dominant driver. What about his progression this year, especially the second half, where he's being one of those young guys you have to keep an eye on? What is his ceiling?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I think his ceiling's really high. I think he's really talented. Him and his brother are both diamonds in the rough, so to speak.

He evolved a lot as a driver. Gained a ton of confidence. Him and Rodney started hitting on things. Look, Rodney is amazing. We all know what Rodney has done. He still had to come in here and learn what these cars like, working within our own system, how we prepare. He did a really good job. That doesn't happen overnight.

I feel like Rodney had to learn a lot of things early in the year. He took some risks that didn't work, just from his own personal history. That was kind of fun to watch that play out, him become a guy that could put a car on the racetrack in the last half of the season that was Rodney Childers' kind of car.

I'm excited about next year. I'm excited for a lot of reasons, not only within our own team, but Corey Day is going to be a handful. He is so good, so talented. Still has some mistakes to make like a lot of young drivers, but it's just going to be an incredible season next year. It's going to be full of competition and very challenging.

I think Corey steps it up. I think Carson steps it up. We know what Justin is going to do and should do next year. There's a handful of other guys that can get in there and mix it up. It's going to be a fun season.

DR. ERIC WARREN: Talking to Carson ahead of the race, he was talking about how he wasn't an intermediate racer, he's a short-track racer. Watching him run as well as he did tonight, he's going to gain that confidence. And I think that's really going to be important going into next year, the race he had tonight.

Q. Andrew, you really worked with young drivers for the most part. This year you got paired with Justin. We know Justin is not inexperienced. What is that like for you and how you have to adjust your style?

ANDREW OVERSTREET: I mean, for us, I said at the beginning of the year, I got to focus on making speed and executing races, just managing the race, focusing on the details.

Last year we had pit road issues. We had learning in general. But with Justin, I can sit there and talk through what he's gone through the last couple years. We can execute. We have a vast setup library for him. We can look at what he's done well and what hasn't worked.

Jim Pohlman built a great team. We were able to fine-tune things, just execute every single week.

Q. Dale, Justin wins six races in the regular season, so he's up 25 points on everybody. He doesn't win in the Chase. Gets outscored by a couple, Jesse and Sheldon, in the Chase. Do you think this is the right balance of rewarding such a strong regular season, even if he gets out-pointed a little bit in the Chase, he is the champion?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, I mean, otherwise we would just crown a champion after the regular season, then have a 10-race championship. So I feel pretty good about how it stacks up. I said this on my show. I think I need to see about three years of this thing to kind of truly know, like, where maybe some flaws in it or some things that can change.

This is what we kind of all begged for. We did a lot of things during the regular season that sort of aided us in this Playoffs when we had to overcome some tough moments.

Yeah, I feel pretty good about the end result. It feels pretty good in my heart. But then on the Cup side, there's a whole 'nother deal playing out over there, right?

That tells you this could go so many different ways. Racing insight guys ran thousands and thousands of simulations to figure out what was wrong with it. I know Russell and those guys, I feel pretty confident in their abilities to make sure that they weren't going to put something in front of us that was going to screw the sport.

I'm pretty happy with it. I think we ride it out for a little while and don't change too much, don't get too eager to change, even if there might be a little anomaly here and there. Get a good little sample size to really judge if there needs to be some adjustments made.

I know lot of work went into putting together what we have this year. I feel really good about it. Even on the Cup side I'm pretty entertained and content with what we're watching and seeing.

DR. ERIC WARREN: That 20-point difference between first and second played out a lot bigger. Everyone knew it was going to be a big change. It certainly kept everyone in it. Doesn't let you predict what is going to happen quite as easily.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: When we think about the Chase, we don't want to even the score for everybody. We want to make it almost impossible for some guys. I think that's what we have.

We do want sixth, fifth, seventh, eighth to have a chance, some realistic chance. We don't want 10th or 16th, whether it's in the Cup Series or the O'Reilly Series, who has a little bit smaller pool, we don't want somebody coming from way behind to turn the sport upside down.

I think it's in a good spot. Again, I don't have a like or dislike at this point. I think it's too early to tell. A couple more years of this, we'll see if things are a little heavyweight in terms of stage points and stuff like that.

Stage points kind of surprised at how important they were. I'm watching even Trucks and O'Reilly and Cup together, stage points are so important. They're nice in the past, but not like so critical to the end game. It seems like they're very important now.

Q. Dale, got the deal announced with Justin Allgaier this past week. Long road to get there. Walk through the negotiation, the process.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Wasn't much of a negotiation. We just waited to see what he wanted to do.

I don't know this as well as Justin does. Honestly, we really haven't had any in-depth conversations around it. The way I see it or understand it is Justin has a family business to go run. He wants to do that. It's important to him. I think there's a legacy there and something that he wants to continue.

Whenever that seems like that's what he needs to do, that sort of overrides what he's doing on the racetrack, then he'll go do that.

He's raced and raced and raced and gave us everything we've ever asked, been just the perfect of example of not only a great driver behind the wheel, but how he is with partners is really the standard. I mean, I don't think he gets enough credit for just how good he is with all of our partners.

We have multiple partners. He doesn't just have Brandt to deal with. We throw all kinds of things at this guy. He makes everybody happy. We bring in new partners, and we never have to worry about whether they're going to enjoy their experience because he makes it good.

I don't know where that comes from, but it's just something I've always been impressed with him.

But I think at some point he's got to make a decision of, Man, I've had this awesome career, a great time, but I want to go continue what my family's built. We're completely happy if he would have chose that tomorrow, to go do that after this year.

Honestly, got with Overstreet. They started running so damn good, kind of changed his temperature a little bit on the whole thing. I would credit Overstreet for having a great culture in his team, having a culture in his team that Justin wants to continue to be a part of.

I'll say this. Justin's job is a lot of work. The crew chief, team owners, partners, they've got to make sure that they sort of see how they can make this convenient and easy on him in moments. That's a big role for this guy right here, Overstreet, to make sure that he's taking some stress and weight off his drivers' shoulders.

Apparently Overstreet did a tremendous job this year because Justin wants to continue driving.

Q. Dale and Andrew, if you were winning this championship, say Allgaier was going part-time next year, if he was stepping away, how does celebrating the championship knowing he's coming back compare to a situation like that, kind of knowing you're building something?

ANDREW OVERSTREET: We talked about it. We knew that if we could get this going, I mean, we can start a dynasty here. He's won two of the last three. He has been a staple of this series for a long time, as long as I've known him. Especially with Brandt. If he can keep building on that, it's going to be great for this sport.

You look at the history of this sport, especially the Grand National Series, seeing some iconic people in it. When Dale raced, having the AC Delco car. I know Justin appreciates being able to build the sport that way.

Q. Andrew, when I spoke to Justin at the beginning of the season about being paired with you, he said, We've loved each other, we've hated each other. Five or six years ago nobody would ever say we'd work together, but we're going to excel this year because it's a good decision. What has this year meant to you and that relationship, and then to cap it off, first year out with a championship?

ANDREW OVERSTREET: I mean, it's been a lot of fun. The story goes back in 2011, whenever I needed job as a race engineer, I interviewed at Turner Motorsports to be Justin's engineer, and they told me at the time I didn't have enough experience. So I went and did the truck stuff with Ricky Carmichael that year. But I would fill in from time to time with Justin. We built a relationship there.

And then the years of being with the 22 car at Penske, we'd battle the 7 car every weekend. I remember him and Cindric being at it a couple times. They had to come in and have a special meeting in our trailer.

I told him this down on the stage. Seven years ago I got told walking out to pit road that I wasn't going to have a job at Penske. I got a job the next day at JR Motorsports. I told Justin this, we're going to win a championship one day. I didn't really think of it until today. It's like we actually did it.

Even being his teammate, there would be times we would be frustrated, especially Speedway races. JR Motorsports knows we've had our stuff.

Getting to work with him, I love his family. He and I share the same faith, and Eddie D'Hondt. It's helped push us the whole time. It's just been fun because we're just laid back. Even with all the issues at the start of the Chase, we both said, It's going to be okay. We've been blessed with how everything went. We were content with it. But we knew that we had a job at hand and we weren't going to give up.

I just love that fight in Justin. I think that's from being around for so long.

Q. Dale, Justin is now a two-time champion. 34 wins, which put him sixth on the all-time list in the series. What do you say to people, including a certain Dirty Mo Media employee, about whether he's a Hall of Famer?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: We're going to win the championship next year, the year after that, maybe that will put that to bed (smiling).

I think Justin is a Hall of Famer in my mind because whether he truly ever gets that honor, I just feel like his work ethic and his attitude and personality, he's a Hall of Fame guy. He kind of checks a lot of boxes.

We got a chance. He's still in his prime. We got a chance with Andrew here to win a lot of races next year and the year after that, maybe convince him to drive even more (smiling).

I don't know. We'll see. I love that conversation 'cause I think he is really kind of on the fringe or the outside looking in maybe. I don't want to speak on the criteria.

Yeah, he's a huge asset. I know that NASCAR realizes that, too. When he was in the middle of this sort of, you know, searching for his answer on whether to continue or not, I know there's a lot of people in the industry that were starting to appreciate the value of him being a part of the O'Reilly Series, then what he might be able to be for NASCAR beyond his driving career.

He's that kind of guy. He's the kind of person you want to continue to keep in the building or keep in the tent, so to speak.

Q. I was going to reference the Hall of Fame discourse here because Justin is part of this breed of driver we've seen over time who doesn't ever really get established at the Cup Series. Staying in O'Reilly, or even Truck sometimes, goes on to have tremendous success. Justin is the highest one up who really didn't have a prolonged Cup Series career. What is the phenomenon that happens in a driver's career where they don't really land at Cup long-term, but are able to stay at this level and do this the way Justin has?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Man, I don't know. You figure that out. I don't know.

That's like the question of trying to figure out how to get a guy through the system. You'll have so many talented drivers that you work with that you believe can do it and can win at the highest level, but the connections or the opportunities just don't mesh, the right thing doesn't happen at the right time.

I'll say this, man. We're very fortunate as a team, and I think the series is fortunate that Justin made a home in the O'Reilly Series. I don't want to imagine where JR Motorsports would be today without him.

We've had some incredible years recently, but when we had tough years, he was the guy I could depend on every race. When we weren't building fast cars, we were struggling to get the results, I could always depend on him to kind of show us what our real potential was as a team in that moment, know really what more we needed to work towards.

That's been a big help for us as a team. Yeah, I don't know. I think that he has the ability to be a Cup champion and a Cup winner, multi-time Cup winner, but not everybody gets that opportunity.

I always remember being a kid thinking, Man, I'm going to go to the racetrack with my dad, I'm a little boy, I want to do this, but there's only 43 people in the country that get to do it on Sunday, only 43. So it's a very tough opportunity to get.

Q. Dale, probably going to come off a little bit like a follow-up. You have young guys continuously cycling through the JR Motorsports pipeline. How does keeping a multi-time champion like Justin locked in past 2026 impact how your younger drivers learn the grind of a race calendar? How much does having Justin's notebook available speed up their own learning curve?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I honestly feel like Andrew could probably answer that question better because Andrew is in every competition meeting. He understands every conversation that those drivers are having with Justin. He probably knows more than I do about how Justin is a mentor.

We all hear it. Justin mentors drivers that aren't even on our team. He has to put up with so much crap. All these young guys come to this series, make so many mistakes around him, he has to kind of bite his tongue so many times. Even in our own building, we've had races where we get these young guys that come in, you're trying to shepherd them, tutor them, create an opportunity for them.

The idea in a perfect world is they're there for a short period of time, then move up. They knock Justin out of the way somewhere. You got to figure out how to have that conversation with them and where they learn a lesson, but also get Justin to understand his role as a veteran within the team, 'cause he's the constant. He's the one that's going to be there next year.

That's been difficult at times. But he has taken to the mentorship and being the veteran and being the voice in the room. He has taken it really well. I don't know. I sometimes feel like I wouldn't have been as good at putting up with some of the hassle that he has to deal with sometimes from teammates over the course of his career in the building.

Yeah, he's had a fast enough car this year he hasn't had to worry about it. He's been ahead of 'em all year. You put enough fast cars on the racetrack, they're going to run into each other every now and then.

DR. ERIC WARREN: Justin has been very valuable to the Chevrolet program as a whole. He really does a lot of the development of the tools, and he sets a great example for the young drivers coming up. And he also does a lot on the Cup Series for us. He's played that role for a long time now. He really helps as you bring young drivers to know that you can be a veteran and also contribute to the group as a whole.

ANDREW OVERSTREET: I think that is what he was talking about. Dr. Warren, since '23, since we moved to the tech center, I was doing the sim development stuff, Justin and I were there. We had to put the value in Justin because he's not going to go into the simulator and cheat it. He wants it to drive the way it does at the racetrack. He wants these kids to go in there and learn to do stuff the right way.

It's easy for people to go video game stuff. Justin, he takes pride in that. I mean, he and I would always stress to try to do that so that the kids knew when they go to the racetrack, this is what to expect. He doesn't want to race guys that they're going to be erratic and not know what to do.

I've seen him take under his wing a lot of these guys that might be in lower-class cars. He wants to see all of 'em succeed.

You look back at Dover when we lost that race from the 53 car, that kid had come up to Justin quite a bit to get guidance. That kid was disappointed because he had hurt Justin, but Justin wasn't mad at him. He took him under is his wing to try to get him better.

It's great to see the type of person that Justin is to help grow this sport and help these young guys, especially the ones that might not have the opportunity or money to be in the top tier. He wants to see the lower-tier guys be able to do good things.

Q. It was mentioned about the bad luck that Justin went through, but he kept this positive mindset. What is it about him, the infectious positivity that perhaps maybe played a factor in this Chase? What is it about him that he doesn't accept no, but thinking positively in terms of it could be worse? Does that make a champion at the end of the day?

ANDREW OVERSTREET: Before this whole process started, when I started my career, I was at HMS, Chad Knaus. I was there as an intern when we won the first championship in '06. I talked to Chad to get a perspective on what to expect in the Chase. I talked to Justin a lot about that.

When we went through those issues, it's lining up exactly like '06 was. We had issues with getting wrecked by teammates, getting caught in a wreck at Loudon. It was just look forward, get all the points you can. We've always put emphasis on getting all the stage points. I think in this Chase there was only one stage we didn't get points in.

We make sure we fill our pot every week and we maximize the day. After Vegas, it was easy for us to just throw in the towel and be done. I think we showed the entire sport that we weren't giving up.

We went out there and tore that car apart and went out for one point. Granted, we didn't need it because the 20 got disqualified. We went out there and showed everybody we're not giving up. That gave Justin more positivity knowing he's got a group that's not going to give up, so he's not going to give up. That fed it the whole time.

I knew we could get the lead back at any moment. I knew every week we could do it. Hendrick Motorsports and JR Motorsports give us great cars and motors. We might not win every single week, but we're going to be in the fight.

Justin knows that. We started that positivity. He told me every time that it's going to be okay. I've relayed that to our team.

We have a group chat where we're sending positivity to everybody. Even going to pit stop practice, get that positivity going with all our guys. Nobody would give up. There was always fight in us. We knew we could be here today.

Q. In terms of next season, now that Justin has two, he could have a chance to become the first three-time champion. How motivating will this lead to next year?

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Didn't know he was going to be the first, so that's really motivating.

ANDREW OVERSTREET: We still got a long list of tracks on our list on my bulletin board. We got to get after it. We're going to do it. We want to go. We set his win record at six. We're going to try to get seven or more.

There's always ways to keep getting better and better. We know where we can get better at each one of these racetracks.

DALE EARNHARDT JR.: That would be the most Justin Allgaier thing to do, to win three championships when no one has ever done it in the series before he retires.

The thing about Justin is, to your point, anytime we ever had a bad day, whether it was during this Chase, early this year, last year, in the past, I always text my drivers. I kind of feel like I lift them up out of the hole a little bit, get them turned around mentally to go to the next race.

You never had to worry about that with him. He was already turned around and ready to go. Already telling you why that wasn't going to be a big deal, and next week was going to be a success. He's always had that mindset.

THE MODERATOR: Andrew, Dale, Eric, congratulations on this championship.