Now that we know Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Budweiser have reunited to bring the iconic red No. 8 car back to the race track for November’s South Carolina 400 at Florence Motor Speedway, is there a chance we can see that race car at more Late Model Stock Car races in 2025?

Earnhardt spoke about the possibility of that, plus why he chose to do this reunion at the short track level on this week’s “Dale Jr. Download” podcast.

“We’ve talked about possibly doing another event next year,” said Earnhardt about running the Bud No. 8 car for a second race. “We don’t know exactly where that might be.”

While he doesn’t yet know where it will be, he did say there’s a very good chance it will be at a CARS Tour race as he said he plans to most likely only compete in CARS Tour races in 2025.

“I want to strictly run CARS Tour events next year,” Earnhardt said. “My calendar has always been anywhere from three-to-five events, so somewhere between three-to-five events with the CARS Tour is what I’m going to try to do again next year, at the start of the year and towards the back end of the year. But we’re hopeful we’ll have another opportunity to drive the Bud brand around the race track next year.”

Over the last couple of years, Earnhardt has run a mixture of CARS Tour-sanctioned races (he is a co-owner of the CARS Tour), NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series races, and one or two NASCAR Xfinity Series races. 

Earnhardt has competed in a Late Model Stock Car at Florence Motor Speedway now a total of six times since the fall of 2022. This year will be his third South Carolina 400, plus two Icebreakers in February the last two years, plus the summer race in 2023 and 2024. This year’s summer race at Florence was a CARS Tour race. Earnhardt also raced at New River All-American Speedway this spring, as well as in the Hampton Heat at Langley Speedway this summer. November’s South Carolina 400 will mark the 11th time we’ve seen Earnhardt behind the wheel of a Late Model Stock Car since August of 2022 at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

The NASCAR Hall of Famer on his podcast alluded to one of the reasons why he runs these races, and why the return of this iconic car is being done on a Late Model, and that’s to help grow the discipline of Late Model Stock Car racing.

“I know this is going to be great nostalgia for a lot of folks,” he said. “I know it will hopefully draw a lot of folks to the race track in Florence (South Carolina) to see it in person, some maybe seeing a Late Model Stock race for the very first time. Some will more than likely fall in love with the discipline and the style of racing and the grassroots atmosphere that I love so much. You may have been to those kinds of races in the past and just got disconnected or separated, and so it’ll be cool to have people be reminded of why this is fun. Why it’s fun to go to your local track, and why it’s fun to be a part of whatever is going on there.

“On the other side, it’ll be streamed on FloRacing. I hope it’ll get great numbers on Flo. Our streaming partners, like Flo, are so critical to the success of grassroots racing, to the success of race tracks like Florence, Langley, all the tracks the CARS Tour goes to. Flo, the streaming partner, is extremely critical to the success of the CARS Tour. Getting their numbers up and getting people to see how easy it is to access these races live, because I think there’s a ton of people out there that want to watch them and just don’t know how or where it’s at.”

The return of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the iconic red No. 8 Budweiser machine will take place at Florence Motor Speedway’s South Carolina 400 on Saturday, November 23.

Race fans can watch that iconic race car take to the track for the first time since 2007 live on FloRacing with a FloRacing subscription. Fans that are not yet subscribers can subscribe to FloRacing by clicking here.