By: Zach Arnold

It has been a busy last two weeks at the JR Motorsports shop in Mooresville, North Carolina. Two new NASCAR drivers have impressed many NASCAR fans in their debuts with the team.

Each driver built their own story in advancing up the ranks to the NASCAR Xfinity Series, but it all started with Bubba Pollard on Easter weekend, at Richmond Raceway. Pollard, 37, made a name for himself racing super late models at various short tracks across the northeast. 

The Georgian native has achieved many accomplishments throughout his racing career, including multiple championships across different short-track associations. It was announced in early 2024 Pollard would make his NXS debut for JRM with the sponsorship of Rheem on March 30th. Whenever Dale Earnhardt Jr. allows someone to drive the famed No. 88, you can expect he has full trust in that driver to park that car in victory lane, no matter how much experience they have. 

Pollard’s big weekend came, and he did not disappoint. Putting the No. 88 at the top of the charts during his first-ever NXS practice, if you did not know who he was before the weekend started, you found out then. 

Pollard would begin the race at the rear as he had to work through a slip-up in qualifying. This was no issue for Pollard, as after the race he mentioned that he was glad to begin the race in last, ” I think it was good for me to start in the rear today, I think it gave me that sense of where I needed to be on the race track, braking points, things like that.”

He finished the race in sixth place, recording his first top-ten finish in the series. 

One week later, it was 20-year-old Carson Kvapil’s opportunity to turn some heads. Kvapil’s NXS debut came at Martinsville Speedway on April 6th. 

The North Carolina native already had a strong relationship with Dale Jr and JRM, as he competes full-time in the CARS Late Model Stock Tour for the team, crowned, champion in 2022 and 2023. The young star also has championships in different late model associations. 

April 6th showed up, and so did Kvapil. In his NXS debut, he finished in fourth. He piloted the No. 88 JRM Chevrolet to the top-five place result from 12th. 

After the race, the prodigy spoke on his debut, “I know this No. 88 team is capable of winning so, really the expectation for me is to go out and win, so coming up with a fourth is not bad, I’m pretty excited but I felt like we had a car that was capable of running top-three and maybe going for the win.”

Earnhardt Jr was in attendance for the Dude Wipes 250, after the race he shared his thoughts on Kvapil’s race, “Excited, really good for this track I think it’s tough to finish here as you saw at the end it gets really aggressive, he’s got such good racecraft, better racecraft than probably 80% of people in the field. He is just mature, he is just that good.”

Earnhardt Jr also shared his thoughts on the importance of showcasing new talent to NASCAR, ” It’s important when you can, when you get the chance to do that you got to take it.” 

Earnhardt Jr. gave a lot of credit to team sponsors for backing both drivers, in saying they were “lucky and fortunate to have some great partners, Rheem helping us out big time to get Bubba his deal, Truck Season Chevrolet everybody getting behind Carson.”

“Chevrolet has a lot of drivers they try to support and help up through the grass-root ranks and we introduced them and had them pay more attention to Carson over the last couple of years, and that’s materialized into many opportunities like this.” Earnhardt Jr said. 

JR Motorsports heads to Texas Motor Speedway for the eighth race of the 2024 season. Catch the race on FS1 on Saturday at 1:30 p.m.