MBM Motorsports haven't competed full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2020, but they've been in the news a lot over the past few seasons, and it generally hasn't been for the reasons their fans have wanted to hear.
In 2023, they skipped the Cup Series season entirely for the first time since they first entered the series in 2017. During the 2023 season, they also announced that they would be scaling back their Xfinity Series operation. They had competed full-time in that series since 2015.
The move to scale back on the Xfinity side came just two years after they made a similar decision on the Cup side. In 2024, they returned to the Cup Series on a part-time basis and continued to compete part-time in the Xfinity Series.
Their goal was to return to the Daytona 500 in 2025, as they had not competed in the race since 2020, and they had not attempted to qualify for it since 2022. But Mike Wallace, whom they had announced as the driver of the No. 66 Ford, was not approved to compete, and his replacement, Chandler Smith, failed to qualify.
It marked five consecutive Daytona 500 DNQs for the team, which is now known as Garage 66 on the Cup side, as they failed to qualify with both of their cars in both 2021 and 2022.
After the news emerged that Wallace had not been approved, we promised that we would revisit an interview we did with team owner Carl Long from the spring of 2021, right around the time when the team cut back on their Cup Series program.
So as MBM Motorsports continue to try to strike the right balance of Xfinity Series and Cup Series competition, all while complying with NASCAR's rules and restrictions, let's take a look back at that interview.
There are just 36 charters in the Cup Series, and while transactions among charters are more common than you might expect, given the limited number of them that exist, they are still quite tough to get your hands on.
Long had long been trying to acquire a charter to run his No. 66 car full-time, no pun intended. But he was never able to do so.
Long ran the No. 66 car full-time in 2020 with Timmy Hill behind the wheel, and that entry began the 2021 season as a full-time entry. But it turned into a part-time entry a few races into the 2021 season due to the lack of a charter and really the lack of financial benefits that come with running a non-chartered (open) entry, compared to a chartered entry.
Long told Beyond the Flag at the time that he had been denied charters on multiple occasions, and he was a firsthand witness of the prices skyrocketing amid his quest to get his hands on one.
He discussed the absurd amounts that are spent on NASCAR Cup Series charters nowadays, noting a massive market price increase in a matter of only a few years.
"Last year [2020], the charters that we were looking at were about $2.5 million," Long said back in 2021. "Then they started getting them priced up to about $4 million. I’ve heard that they’ve already been up to $15 million on offering some – and people not getting them at $15 million."
At the end of the 2023 season, that number was much higher – as in more than twice as high. Even amid the decline in price we saw in 2024, when supply overtook demand for the first time in years due to Stewart-Haas Racing's shutdown, it's not hard to imagine why somebody such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. is reluctant to move to JR Motorsports to the Cup Series.
Long noted at the time that demand for charters was going to be even higher amid the debut of the Next Gen car as multiple owners looked to either take their teams to the Cup Series full-time or acquire additional charters to field more full-time entries.
Given the fact that the $20 to $25 million price tag associated with charters nowadays (which was up to $40 million last offseason, when Live Fast Motorsports sold theirs to Spire Motorsports), it's safe to say he knew what he was talking about – and why he wanted in when he did.
"I think it’s going up more, and that’s why you see the price – two years ago [2019], a charter went for $2.5 million," he continued. "I tried to buy one and didn’t get it. And I don’t have that kind of money, but I have investors that will help us, and some of them are sponsors, that we could make it happen."
Long noted that he got turned down multiple times in 2020 alone, even though multiple charters changed hands ahead of the 2021 season. Between the 2020 and 2021 season along, charter transactions let to the creation of three new teams in 23XI Racing, Trackhouse Racing, and Live Fast Motorsports.
He was willing to pay pretty much anything for one and still couldn't get a deal done.
"I went to them last year with a blank check and said, 'Just tell me how much to fill it out and I’ll get you the money.' And I got turned down, all three charters that went out," he said. "So I don’t know what the situation is that I can’t buy a charter."
Just a couple of years later, that blank check would need to be worth around 10 times as much.
Long believes that some of it may have to do with the fact that he wasn't taken seriously as a team owner.
"I’ve always not had a big budget, I’ve always run underfunded, but some of my backers will buy something solid," he explained. "They may not pay for a bunch of people to work on stuff and wind tunnel time, but if they could buy something tangible like a car or a charter, they can come up with it. And I think the problem with that, people just assume that I can’t write a check, so nobody takes me seriously.
"I got a letter from the bank [in 2020] for the last couple of them and went and told them, 'Look, we can write you a check, we can buy the charter! Here’s the paperwork from the bank!' And by the end, they had cut their own deals and went on down the road."
Unfortunately for MBM Motorsports, four years later, they still don't have a charter, and their name isn't even really brought up as a potential landing spot anymore when a charter is known to be on the market.
That, of course, has not kept Long's team from sticking around and competing from time to time, even after their complete absence from the Cup Series in 2023 and their decision to scale back their once full-time Xfinity Series involvement the same year.
They are set to make their first start of the 2025 Cup Series season this weekend at Martinsville Speedway. Casey Mears, who hasn't competed in a race since 2019, is set to drive the No. 66 Ford in the Cook Out 400, and with fewer than 40 cars on the entry list, he is indeed locked into the race.
Fox Sports 1 is set to provide live coverage of the season's seventh race beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 30, so be sure to start a free trial of FuboTV now and catch all of the action!