Enjoy it while it lasts!
Ahead of the Xfinity Series Cheddar’s 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was asked if it might be his last race in NASCAR.
“I’m not planning on racing next year,” he said. “I’d be foolish to say that I’m never going to run again because I don’t know well enough to stay away from it and I’ll probably miss it next year.”
Earnhardt retired from full-time Cup Series racing in 2017 but has continued to do one or two Xfinity Series events each season to help fund his JR Motorsports team. Bristol is the only race he’s running in 2024.
“I don’t have a requirement to run next year, so I might just not do it,” he said.
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“I will miss it terribly, regret that I didn’t race and probably in 2026 find me somewhere that I can go and compete.”
One driver that hopes he comes back is the soon-to-be-retired Martin Truex Jr., who raced with Earnhardt for the Dale Earnhardt Inc. team early in his career and is planning to continue doing a few races a year when his full-time career is over.
“I told him the other night when I seen him that ah, “can’t he just do, you know, one more year of a few Xfinity races so we can race together one last time?”
Even if Earnhardt doesn’t take him up on the offer, he’ll be at the track running JR Motorsports and said he would consider getting involved in a Cup Series team if the right opportunity comes along.