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JR Motorsports took home more than the gold, silver, and bronze from Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race in Las Vegas via the one-two-three sweep by Josh Berry, Noah Gragson, and Justin Allgaier.

Team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said his crew found a stowaway in the hauler upon arriving home in North Carolina and unloading cars to prepare for this weekend at Homestead-Miami.

Close up of an Opossum in a tree. | Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Close up of an Opossum in a tree. | Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Earnhardt provided visual evidence on social media, after which the Twitter universe had a field day.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team brought home a possum

JR Motorsports owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted on Monday night that his NASCAR team found a surprise passenger when its haulers returned to the shop from Las Vegas and unloaded the cars. Upon popping the hood of one of the cars to begin prepping it for the upcoming weekend, they found a possum in the engine bay.

“I kid you not,” Earnhardt tweeted.

Twitter’s response did not disappoint, including calls for JR Motorsports to adopt the possum as its shop mascot. There was a barrage of other responses, including multiple photos from fans of adorable critters they’ve found residing in their own vehicles.

Leading off, there was a reminder that possums are the good guys of the animal world.

But there was humor, too. Lots and lots of humor, with multiple followers assuming it had to have been found in Noah Gragson’s Chevy. Naturally, multiple comments were pegged to recent news in NASCAR:

It wouldn’t be a genuine Las Vegas story without a nod to one of the greatest marketing campaigns in the history of tourism:

There were GIFs, too:

Chase Briscoe wanted to put the stowaway to work, suggesting the possum would be a natural as this week’s guest on the Dale Jr. Download. (Sorry, Chase, that gig went to Erik Jones.)

As expected, there was speculation about the possum’s intent:

One Twitter follower hit it out of the park while paying homage to Earnhardt’s trademark phrase as a race analyst:

Finally, it looks as though there’s a marketing campaign in JR Motorsports’ future. I anticipate a line of branded T-shirts and stuffed animals coming to the team’s merchandise website in time for Christmas.

Got a question or observation about racing? Sportscasting’s John Moriello does a mailbag column each Friday. Write to him at JohnM@Sportscasting.com.

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John Moriello

John Moriello started covering sports in 1982, began digital publishing in 1995, and joined Sportscasting in 2020. A graduate of St. John Fisher University, he finds inspiration in the underdogs and the fascinating stories sports can tell (both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat). John expertly covers all aspects of NASCAR.

Beginning with his 2014 coverage at Fox Sports of the aftermath of the dirt-race tragedy in which Kevin Ward Jr. died after being struck by a car driven by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, John has excelled as a journalist who specializes in the motorsports world. He previously spent more than three decades covering high school sports and worked as a beat writer covering Big East football and basketball, but NASCAR is now where the true expertise falls.

John is a member of the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame (2013), the President of the New York State Sportswriters Association, and a two-time Best of Gannett winner for print and online collaborations whose work has appeared on FoxSports.com and MaxPreps.com.