Business travel can be routine, but for NASCAR drivers and race teams that travel for 36 races a year, travel is unavoidable.
If these teams had to rely on commercial airline schedules, travel would be a nightmare, if not a logistical impossibility. That’s why most top drivers own private jets and race teams operate fleets of small planes to transport pit crew members and team executives to the racetrack each week.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. owns a LearJet 60, which is the best of the LearJet line and its largest jet. It is a business plane with capacity for 10 passengers.
Thanks to the plane, Earnhardt can leave his home in North Carolina and be at the racetrack in Daytona or Texas a couple of hours later, about the time it would take to get to a major airport and get through security.
NASCAR rookie and former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya also owns a LearJet 60. 2006 champion Jimmie Johnson owns a Learjet 31A, and Jeff Gordon owns a British Aerospace Hawker 800.
Most drivers leave the flying to professional pilots, but Mark Martin is a licensed pilot who often flies his own Cessna Citation. Martin lives in a unique community near Daytona Beach called Spruce Creek. It is a community flight with his own airport. Residents have airplane hangars in the courtyard where most of us have garages. Martin can literally park his jet in the garage.
Race teams operate larger planes to transport pit crews and team executives to the track. Roush Racing operates a fleet of aircraft, including a Boeing 737 and several smaller commercial jets. Dale Earnhardt, Inc. flies with his crew in an Embraer 120, a 30-passenger midsize turboprop.
While cars have personalized license plates, NASCAR teams have personalized aircraft registration numbers. Dale Jr’s Learjet is N8JR and Jeff Gordon’s Hawker is N24JG. The corporate Embraer at Dale Earnhardt, Inc. is N500DE.
NASCAR has become so reliant on private jet travel that many tracks are located right next to airports. Daytona International Speedway is located right next to the Daytona Beach International Airport, where private jets and commercial flights arrive daily.
While most runways are not located that close to a major international airport, some runways have built their own airports. Right next to Atlanta Motor Speedway is Tara Field, a small general aviation airstrip that sees little traffic until race week, when more than 600 planes descend on this small airfield.
Some tracks aren’t that convenient, though, but when that happens, expect NASCAR drivers to find a solution. When NASCAR descends on a track like Dover Delaware, some drivers like Dale Earnhardt dodge race traffic by flying from the airport to the track in a chartered helicopter, landing directly on the infield.
Some people consider traveling by private jet to be a luxury, but with today’s busy driver schedule it’s a necessity. After a Sunday afternoon race, a pilot can jump on his jet and be home on Sunday night. This means that they can meet with the team managers and team owners on Monday morning to review the previous race and develop a strategy for the next race. During the week, the drivers are often back on the plane, meeting with sponsors, shooting TV commercials, making public appearances and testing. Without a jet this schedule would be impossible. Most drivers agree that owning a private jet gives them a day or two a week of productive time, or just allows them the occasional day off.
You can view images of these aircraft on JetJit.com and get more detailed information about each aircraft.