Mears makes plans to push for milestone 500th NASCAR Cup Series start

Casey Mears was presented with the perfect excuse.

It was about a year ago when Mears announced he was partnering with Carl Long’s team, Garage 600, to make his NASCAR return. Mears had found out that he was close to making 500 starts in the NASCAR Cup Series and wanted to take a chance to make that happen. He ended up making five starts with the team to reach 494.

“I think if I’m honest with myself, the 500 [mark] is something that gave me a goal and an excuse to [come] back,” Mears said. “Very few people get to call their shot and retire when they want to. You can probably, in the last 15 years, 20 years, pick five people out of a crowd that said, ‘I’m retiring. This is my last season. Thank you very much, guys. I’m gone.’ Most of us wake up one day, and it’s musical chairs, and you don’t have a seat. The music stops, and there is nothing there.

“I didn’t call my shot. I didn’t decide not to race anymore. I was forced out.”

Mears saw the end of his full-time career come in 2016. In hindsight, it would be another two years before Mears stopped lying to himself, realized it was over, and moved on. It was a situation that Mears didn’t like, but understood: Bob Germain, the owner of Germain Racing, made the best financial decision for his race team by partnering with Richard Childress Racing and putting Ty Dillon in the car.

Not until 2019 did Mears make another Cup Series start. Then he disappeared again until last season.

“I had options when I look back on it, and I had options to run with other programs when I decided to step away,” he continued. “But it would have been more of a situation that I’m in now, and coming fresh off something that was competitive and I knew had a shot to at least compete, make a little bit of a living, that all justifies being away from your family if you’re making a living and you can go out and have fun, the cars are fast, you have opportunity. I just didn’t see myself riding around the racetrack, uncompetitive, not making the money I should be making, and losing that time with my family at the same time. It didn’t compute. It didn’t make sense.

“So, I consciously did make a decision to step away, but it wasn’t because I wanted to; it was because the opportunity wasn’t there. Now, being later in my career … I’m lying to myself if I said it was just because of 500. It’s because I still want to do it, and I still love driving a race car. I still love the competition. I love being a part of it. The 500 is just a really good excuse to go back and do it again.”

It was overwhelming for Mears when he came back to Martinsville Speedway in the spring of 2025 and found himself among competitors and peers that he hadn’t been around for a long time. The fan reaction was another eye-opening experience, as Mears found himself signing autographs outside the tunnel on items from early in his career. But it also helped Mears share that part of his life with his children, who have few memories of those years.

“At the end of the day, I take accountability for my results,” said Mears of his full-time career, which ran from 2003 through 2016 with team owners like Chip Ganassi, Rick Hendrick, and Richard Childress. “I had opportunities with great programs. Yes, I can say there were inopportune times. I can go through my whole story, and there are some realities that made it more difficult than it should have been getting those good opportunities. But then again, the guys that were successful had some difficult things, too. So, I feel like I had an upper-mediocre career. I was good enough where I was valuable to somebody throughout my whole career. I wasn’t quite good enough to ever feel comfortable.

“I signed three-year contracts, I signed four-year contracts, and I can’t tell you during those 15 years that there was one year once I got midseason that I felt 100% confident that I was coming back. And that’s a lot of stress to carry.”

By qualifying for the season-opening Daytona 500, Mears is now at 495 starts. The plan – or the goal – is for Mears and the No. 66 team to return to more races this season, likely superspeedways, and for him to hit the 500 milestone before the end of the year.

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