“Right now it just doesn’t feel like – it just feels like it’s broken a little bit.” Journalist Jeff Gluck made this comment after Katherine Legge’s disaster-laden Phoenix Cup debut. After COVID-19 broke the usual traditions of NASCAR, it has never become whole again. The stock car racing series had to adapt to the pandemic and that involved curtailing practice times. NASCAR eliminated practice sessions for some time before introducing just 20-25 minutes for the post-COVID era. However, Dale Earnhardt Jr believes that the Cup Series will soon fix its broken schedule again.

The 2025 season saw a lot of international motorsports athletes debut in NASCAR. IndyCar legend Helio Castroneves and English racer Katherine Legge wanted a taste of stock car racing. But chaos unfolded for both of them. This may induce the higher-ups to change things – as Dale Earnhardt Jr surmises.

Dale Earnhardt Jr woos more wheel time

Before the pandemic started, NASCAR drivers could utilize both Friday and Saturday for long practice sessions. That honed them for the upcoming race – and every weekend featured different tracks ranging from aerodynamically complex superspeedways to the tricky turns of road courses. But currently, the lack of adequate practice coupled with tricky racetracks put newcomers in a dilemma. During the Daytona 500 in February, Helio Castroneves encountered trouble on lap 71. Ross Chastain tagged the four-time Indy 500 champion and Castroneves got caught in a multi-car melee.

Now Katherine Legge also faced a similar scenario in Phoenix, where her No. 78 Chevrolet fell prey to two wrecks. But on the sunny side, these unfortunate situations may lead to better times ahead. In a recent Dale Jr Download episode, Dale Earnhardt Jr delivered a bold prediction. “My prediction is in two years, we’ll be practicing…I think practice is coming back. NASCAR hasn’t said a word about it, they probably have no intentions of bringing it back. But I think that logic will prevail…I think if the teams just got a solid hour, they could bust that up into 30 minutes.” 

In early 2024, NASCAR sent ripples of criticism by reducing practice times even further. The start of 2025 at least signaled a slight change – teams got 25 minutes of practice before time trials. Phoenix got an exception of 45 minutes – and yet Katherine Legge could not keep up. Dale Earnhardt Jr stressed that this exception should extend to other races as well. “I think the best-case scenario would be for the cars to show up, maybe get 10 minutes or 20 minutes, and go right into qualifying…And then they would have a post-qualifying practice that would be anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. So you get like a happy hour.” He reiterated his prediction: “Inside of two years, we have a form of practice return – not this 20-minute group A group B bulls—.”

A few active Cup Series drivers also believe that more practice would solve problems. Their vehement opinions spun off after Katherine Legge’s controversy.

Spotlight on the difficulty of the sport

Katherine Legge has a diverse racing resume – having competed in motorsports disciplines from the IndyCar Series to Formula E. However, her stock car racing resume is limited – she owned only four Xfinity Series starts and one wreck-laden ARCA start before the Shriner’s Children 400. To prepare, she only had some simulator time and drove a car in pit practice. So it was hardly surprising that she could not do much with NASCAR’s limited practice time. Legge spun out on lap 4 at Phoenix, being able to recover her No. 78 car. But the second time, it sealed her and Daniel Suarez‘s fate. On lap 215, Legge spun out again and caught Suarez’s No. 99 Chevrolet in a crippling crash.

Daniel Suarez was running 6th at the time, and his frustration was apparent after the race. “We work very hard to get into silly accidents like the one from last week,” he said. But he put more stress on NASCAR to have the responsibility of giving new drivers more practice. “She got set for failure…It doesn’t matter if you’re a great driver or a bad driver. If you are thrown in one of the most difficult series in the world to be competitive, is just not fair.” 2024 Cup Series champion Joey Logano also agreed: “If you’ve never driven a stock car, should you just jump in a Cup car with 20 minutes of practice and line up and race?”

Evidently, the lack of practice time is evoking reactions from not just Dale Earnhardt Jr, but the wider NASCAR Cup Series grid also. Hopefully, Dale Jr.’s prediction will come true and NASCAR will pay heed to the pressing problem.