Dale Earnhardt Jr. has sung the praises of Justin Haley’s ability to get good performances on the racetrack over the last few seasons, despite being in equipment not expected to deliver such results. The NASCAR Hall of Famer was high on Haley’s status as a rising commodity in the NASCAR Cup Series garage after churning out solid results for Kaulig Racing in 2023 and in the No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Ford a season ago.
However, after Haley parlayed a solid season with Rick Ware Racing into a trade to Spire Motorsports late in the 2024 season, Earnhardt admits the 26-year-old racer simply hasn’t had it.
“Justin Haley was a good free agent in this sport. He drove for Rick Ware and did some pretty interesting, solid — pretty curious solid runs in that car. And he has leveraged that into this opportunity at Spire. But since he’s been there, it has been awful. It’s been bad,” Earnhardt explained in a segment on this week’s Dale Jr. Download.
TJ Majors, Earnhardt’s co-host, indicated that he expected big things out of Haley going into the 2025 season with Spire Motorsports, a take that Earnhardt agreed with, especially considering the acquisition of Rodney Childers to crew chief the No. 7 car at the beginning of the season.
“I did [think he they were going to be good] too, they got Rodney Childers in there, and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Damn, that’s an awesome,’ I felt like that had the potential to be the best Spire car, and it has been the opposite,” Earnhardt said.
Earnhardt feels the departure of Childers after the ninth race of the season certainly didn’t help Haley build a solid foundation for success in 2025, but that the change to Ryan Sparks at the crew chief position hasn’t been the magical cure for the No. 7 team either.
“Rodney got out of there, we’ll never really know, Rodney is not going to tell his side of the story. He’s never going to say anything negative about anybody, and the Spire guys aren’t going to say anything bad about Rodney. We’ll never know what happened there, but I think that derailed Haley a little bit,” Earnhardt said. “Anytime you have a crew chief change mid-season, it’s not awesome. And it hasn’t seemed to have made Haley’s deal much different.”
In the six races since Childers left the team, Haley has just one top-15 finish, which was a 15th-place result at Texas Motor Speedway. The other five races with Sparks atop the pit box have ended in finishes outside of the top 20.
As a result, Haley now ranks 29th in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, the lowest of the three Spire Motorsports drivers, by far.
After last weekend’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway, Carson Hocevar (drives the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet) ranks 18th in the standings, while Michael McDowell (drives the No. 71) sits 23rd.
Hocevar and McDowell are slotted lower than they could be as well, as both drivers have seen potential race wins fade into sub-20th-place runs this season. McDowell led 22 laps late in the race at Texas, but crashed out while running third in the closing laps and finished 24th.
Hocevar had a car capable of winning at Michigan, but was running short on fuel, and ultimately cut a tire while leading in the closing laps and finished 28th.
Meanwhile, Haley hasn’t been in the conversation for a race win. This has Earnhardt wondering if perhaps Haley just doesn’t have it, or if there is a disparity in the quality of the cars being put together for the three Spire Motorsports teams.
“I don’t think Justin Haley is being told not to go for it, but how much discrepancy, I guess, is it between that 77 and the 7? How similar are the parts and pieces? I mean, the cars are very much the same, everybody gets the same shit. But I’m telling you these top teams, man, they got a favorite part,” Earnhardt explained. “If you buy 10 A-frames, or 10 right rear quarterpanels, or 10 rockers, all of them, they’re going to look at all of them, and go, ‘I think this is the best one out of the bunch, and this is my least favorite one because the shape is a little bit different.’ And the teams will tell you, you stack all that tiny stuff up, and you’ve got a small advantage.”
Through the opening 15 races of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, Haley has certainly been one of the biggest disappointments in the NASCAR Cup Series. The driver has just one top-10 finish and four top 15s, while his teammates have consistently outshone him on the track.
