MBM Motorsports have not competed in the Daytona 500 since 2020, and prior to this year, they had not attempted to do so since 2022, when both their cars missed the race for the second year in a row. They had been aiming to change that in 2025, with Mike Wallace behind the wheel of the No. 66 Ford at Daytona International Speedway last month.
But NASCAR announced that Wallace would not even allowed to attempt to qualify, leaving the Carl Long-owned team without a confirmed driver or sponsor just weeks before the race. They went with Chandler Smith, and he ended up failing to qualify via either the single-car qualifying session or the Duel at Daytona.
The decision and subsequent failure to qualify marked yet another twist in the saga of Long's team competing in NASCAR, one which includes the news from the summer of 2023 that they would be scaling back in the Xfinity Series, after having fielded an entry in every race since they entered the sport full-time back in 2015.
They made a similar move at the Cup level in 2021 and ended up missing the 2023 Cup Series season entirely before making select appearances throughout the 2024 season, all while continuing to run a part-time Xfinity Series program. The 2023 season was their first season without any Cup Series starts since they entered the series for the first time in 2017.
Amid the ongoing uncertainty surrounding one of the sport's smaller, lesser-funded organizations, and after yet another blow before yet another Daytona 500 DNQ, we promised we'd revisit an interview we did with team owner Carl Long in the spring of 2021, if for no other reason than to bring awareness to this small team's continued commitment to the sport.
The Long-owned team competed full-time in the Cup Series for the first time in 2020 with Timmy Hill behind the wheel of the No. 66 car. Entering the 2021 season, Hill had competed in every race on the calendar going back to the 2019 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
While he failed to qualify for the 2021 Daytona 500, he kept his entry streak alive by competing in the season's next five races at the Daytona road course, Homestead-Miami Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Phoenix Raceway, and Atlanta Motor Speedway.
But that's when things took quite a negative turn for MBM Motorsports and the Port Tobacco, Maryland native.
Back in 2021, NASCAR was running what was called the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, which had been introduced in 2020 as a result of the lack of actual on-track action amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the fact that there were spots left open in the 2021 eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series opener at the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt track, Hill and MBM Motorsports were inexplicably omitted from the entry list.
Full-time drivers were required to compete, yet Hill, then a full-time driver, was not even allowed in.
Keep in mind, they had been running full-time since the start of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season at the time.
They were simply overlooked.
Hill won the race at virtual Texas Motor Speedway in 2020, and had points been tallied for the series, he would have been the runaway championship winner with six top three finishes in seven aces.
Yet he and the No. 66 car were left off the entry list for the 2021 opener, as if they didn't exist.
Hill did end up competing in the race, thanks to a kind gesture by drivers from another team, but the No. 66 car – the car actually affiliated with Long and MBM Motorsports – didn't make its first appearance of the season until the following event at virtual Talladega Superspeedway.
Based on how MBM Motorsports were packaging their Cup Series sponsorship deals at the time, they had been relying on the ability to compete in that initial event to support their real-life Cup Series venture.
Skip ahead to 2025, and Hill has competed in just 10 Cup Series races since – and the team have only competed in 21 others, with a 22nd now scheduled for the upcoming race at Martinsville Speedway.
"We try to sell our iRacing in conjunction with our normal Cup deal, and it just took that tool away," Long told Beyond the Flag back in 2021. "We had that tool back [from 2020], and they’re allowing Timmy to go do it, we just have not been able to secure sponsorship with that."
However, Long never placed the blame on the whole iRacing debacle when it came to why his team had to scale back from full-time Cup Series competition in early 2021.
"So with or without the iRacing deal, we would have probably been pulling back out of the Cup racing," he explained. "It’s not because of the iRacing deal; that’s just a small catalyst that hurt us. And you take 10 different things and add it up, and that’s why. … It's just tough."
He discussed the real reason why MBM Motorsports had to step back, and thus why their Cup Series appearances have been sparse since that 2021 Bristol weekend.
"The biggest thing that hurt MBM Motorsports, by far: I would’ve raced every race this year [2021], but they took, the RTA decided to take the 1% of the total purse that the open cars received, and they took that 1% and split it throughout the purse of their charter cars," he explained.
"So when I go to the race track to make a race, just to give you an idea, Martinsville pays me $15,000 to start in last place. A chartered car gets I think it’s about $53,000 to pick up last place money. Last year, I got paid $35,000 to show up. It was $19,500 that they took away. And NASCAR didn’t do it; it was the RTA.
"The RTA is basically like the unions that all of the big teams are a part of, and they tell NASCAR, 'Well, this is what we want, and this is what we’re going to do.' And so NASCAR has to kind of follow them."
He did note that this played a role in Hill's omission from that first virtual event; it's all interconnected.
"The RTA is the reason why Timmy got overlooked! They were supposed to let us know that Timmy was going to be in the iRacing. Between the RTA and some of the other people, we just got overlooked; we got missed."
MBM Motorsports had been looking for a charter for years, but they were never able to secure one. Keep in mind, charter market prices have gone up from roughly $2.5 million to between $20 and $25 million since 2019 (peaking at around $40 million after the 2023 season), making it that much more unlikely that Long and his team will be able to get their hands on one now.
And at this point, their name isn't even really brought up when a charter becomes available.
But this year's early-season setback for the team is just another obstacle. As they noted in their announcement when they had to scale back their Xfinity Series operation, "MBM is not in the business of giving up". Will that prove true as they look to get back to competing in the Cup Series on a semi-regular basis?
Tune in to Fox Sports 1 for the live broadcast of the Cook Out 400 from Martinsville Speedway this Sunday, March 30 at 3:00 p.m. ET. Casey Mears is set to drive the No. 66 Ford in this event, marking his first Cup Series start since 2019. Start a free trial of FuboTV and catch all of the action!