With the official turn of the new year on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season is just around the corner. One of the most pressing questions leading into February is always: how many cars will show up in an attempt to secure a spot in the field for the Daytona 500? Well, you can count Garage 66 in, according to Carl Long, who spoke to Doug Rice in an interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio before Christmas about the team’s upcoming 2026 plans.
Not only will Garage 66 compete for a spot in the 40-car Daytona 500 field, but Long says Garage 66 has secured an engine lease for the four NASCAR Cup Series events at Daytona and Talladega in 2026, and that Casey Mears, who ended a six-year hiatus from NASCAR by competing for the team in five events in 2025 (including the final three of the season), is expected to be behind the wheel of the No. 66 Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Daytona International Speedway.
“I’ve got enough stuff going on, I’m about as messed up as a soup sandwich right now,” Long quipped when pressed by Rice about his team’s 2026 plans. “But I can put it out here for you. We have committed [to] leasing engines [from Roush-Yates Engines] for our Cup car for the Daytona and the Talladega races this year. So, that’ll be four of them that we know. We have Casey Mears lined up to drive for us at Daytona. We’re just trying to get one sponsor deal back with us. I think Casey did an excellent job with us last year.”
In addition to Mears, 47, taking care of Garage 66’s equipment in his stint behind the wheel in 2025, Long noticed a drastic difference for his No. 66 team with Mears behind the wheel compared to when other drivers have competed for his organization in recent years.
“The one thing that I have with Casey that my Timmy Hills, Josh Bilickis, and Chad Finchums don’t get, like Casey does, is the respect on the racetrack,” Long explained. “Casey was out [there], and if he got out of the groove a little bit or got a bad run or somebody left him out — nobody really left him to hang out and dry. Denny Hamlin worked with us. The young kids knew him, respected him, and worked with him. To me, it was a lot better because most of the time, we get hung out. But Casey has a lot of friends and people willing to work with him, so we want Casey as our driver even if we don’t get some of the sponsors to return.”
Mears, who won the 2007 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, has expressed interest in reaching 500 career NASCAR Cup Series starts. Heading into the 2026 season, Mears sits six races shy of that mark with 494 starts on his record.
The Garage 66 team, which attempted to make the field for the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium last season, will also return to attempt the preseason exhibition event in 2026, and according to Long, they will field either Chad Finchum or Josh Bilicki for that race.
Long feels that his team could compete in up to 26 races with the three Next Gen chassis in their rotation, but aside from Bowman Gray, the two Daytona races, and two Talladega races, Garage 66 currently only has Texas Motor Speedway and the Spring Bristol Motor Speedway race, both with Chad Finchum, solidified.
But if sponsorship can materialize, Long isn’t opposed to a bigger schedule for the Garage 66 NASCAR Cup Series program in 2026.
As far as MBM Motorsports, which Long fields in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (formerly Xfinity Series) and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, he is still putting the pieces together there as well.
Long says while he has a bountiful harvest of NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series chassis at his shop, that financially, it doesn’t make sense to attempt to run races in that series for his team, currently. But again, if someone is willing to sign a check, MBM Motorsports could be ready to dig in for a 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series run.
“I have 26 Xfinity cars just sitting still. But without having a tie-in with a big team or a factory or somebody like that, and a bunch of money — if I can go out and have the engine program all year, then it opens the doors, but you’ve got to pay to be with these guys in an association,” Long stated.
As for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Long says he has acquired chassis from Front Row Motorsports, which acquired trucks from Hattori Racing Enterprises ahead of the 2025 season due to the last-minute signing of Chandler Smith. As Front Row is transitioning its No. 38 team to its own in-house-built chassis, Long says he acquired the Hopkins chassis that Front Row utilized in 2025, one of which Smith won with at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Long says that if everything works out, he will be fielding the MBM Motorsports truck in the season-opening event at Daytona International Speedway with Tyler Tomassi behind the wheel. Tomassi competed for Long’s MBM Motorsports team in the Talladega race last Fall. Tomassi finished 27th in the 36-truck field.
Additionally, MBM Motorsports is set to compete in the ARCA Menards Series in 2026 as well, and Long says he is set to have Derek White behind the wheel for the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. White, who hails from Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, was indefinitely suspended by NASCAR in 2016 after he was arrested and charged with smuggling tobacco from the United States into Canada.
As White exhausted the legal process fighting the charges, iHeartRadio issued a True-Crime Series related to White’s arrest titled ‘Running Smoke’ in 2022.
In 2025, White had the ruling overturned by the Canadian Superior Court, which led to his NASCAR reinstatement in 2025. White, 55, competed in three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series events last season, and had a best finish of 19th, which he achieved at Watkins Glen International while driving for MBM Motorsports.
