Dale Jr Backs Marks's 3 Million Speed Festival Push
dale jr put Justin Marks’s NASCAR All-Star overhaul idea in the spotlight after the Trackhouse Racing owner said the All-Star Race should move beyond a $1 million payday. Marks wants the event to become a broader Speed Festival, with a richer purse and a format that gives teams more reason to care.
Justin Marks and the payout
Marks said the All-Star Race has paid $1 million for a couple of decades, and he argued that inflation and the rising cost of getting to the racetrack were never built into that number. He said the current purse works out to about 16 days of payroll for some teams, or 18 days for big teams, which is why he believes the economics no longer fit the event.
“If it was 3 or 4 million bucks and paid better through the field, that would make more economic sense,” Marks said during a recent interview about the race. That line is the center of his case: the event can stay special, but the payout has to rise if NASCAR wants the race to carry real financial weight.
Speed Festival idea in Vegas
Marks pushed the concept further on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, where he laid out a “Speed Festival” that could replace the traditional All-Star Race setup. His version would not even need to be a competitive event on a racetrack. Instead, he suggested a drag race, a pit stop competition and a burnout competition at the strip in Vegas.
“I’ve suggested having like a Speed Festival, like maybe it’s not even a competitive event on a racetrack, but we go to the strip in Vegas and do a drag race and the pit stop competition and a burnout competition, and we engage the fans and turn it into a TV show. And we do this kind of like Coachella of speed type thing,” he said. NASCAR has run pit crew contests before, along with a burnout contest that has largely faded from memory.
All-Star Race and Dover backlash
The timing of the proposal fits the mood around the race itself. The 2026 NASCAR All-Star Race was already in the books when the comments surfaced, and fans were still asking what track should host it. This past weekend’s event at Dover Motor Speedway left many with a sour taste after an off vibe, a regular-May-race feel and a format that produced plenty of wrecks.
That backdrop gives Marks’s proposal more than a simple novelty angle. The current setup has been in place long enough for the $1 million figure to feel stale, and his push is aimed at changing both the payout and the shape of the weekend before the race settles even deeper into the same pattern.
