Dale Earnhardt Jr. may have walked away from full-time racing after the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season, but the now 51-year-old continues to enjoy a successful part-time career behind the wheel in both the Xfinity Series and his zMAX CARS Tour.
For the Hall of Famer, 2025 marked his first year without participating in a single Xfinity Series since winning back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999 with his late dad’s team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc. However, this doesn’t appear to be any indication that he’s slowing down, given that he also raced in a career-high four CARS Tour races this season, including a season-best 10th-place finish at Anderson Motor Speedway in the No. 8 Chevrolet.
“I’m definitely going to run next year, and it’s really a year-to-year kind of thing,” Earnhardt told The Athletic. “I used to own a helicopter. I bought my helicopter from Tony Stewart, and I had that helicopter for a couple years. It was great.
“But I woke up one day, out of nowhere — nothing happened, I didn’t see anything, read anything — I just woke up one day and went, ‘I don’t want to get in a helicopter anymore.’ And I sold it.
“So (with racing) I think one day I’ll just wake up and go, ‘You know what? I think that was it. I think that was the last one.’ I really feel it’ll be that way.
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“It’s been like a faucet I’ve been slowly turning off as I went and ran those Xfinity Series races once a year, and now the Late Model races. I’m just kind of slowly turning that faucet off until I feel like I’m ready to shut it off entirely.”
Whether or not the faucet has completely shut off for specific series, such as the Xfinity, in which his team, JR Motorsports, has become a dominant force, remains to be seen. The last time he ran in the series, he wound up finishing seventh at Bristol Motor Speedway in the No. 88 Chevrolet.
This ride is set to be piloted by current Craftsman Truck Series star Rajah Caruth next season, who will be taking on a part-time role with JRM. However, the driver announcement seemed to tease a second “All-Star” driver in the No. 88, which remains publicly unknown.
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What is known is that Caruth will be driving alongside Connor Zilisch and Carson Kvapil in the No. 1, Shane van Gisbergen and Ross Chastain in the No. 9, Sammy Smith in the No. 8, and Justin Allgaier in the No. 7.
As for Earnhardt, while he may not be driving full-time, his sporadic appearances behind the wheel are more than enough to keep him busier than most, combined with his role with JRM, that of Dirty Mo Media’s founder and podcast host, iRacing’s executive director, as well as his broadcasting roles with Amazon Prime and TNT, among other positions.