{"id":237377,"date":"2025-10-24T16:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/237377\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T16:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:59:10","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jrs-nascar-retirement-timeline-after-xfinity-first-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/237377\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr’s NASCAR retirement timeline after Xfinity first – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dale Earnhardt Jr.<\/a> may have walked away from full-time racing after the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc. However, this doesn\u2019t appear to be any indication that he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m definitely going to run next year, and it\u2019s really a year-to-year kind of thing,\u201d Earnhardt told The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cI used to own a helicopter. I bought my helicopter from Tony Stewart, and I had that helicopter for a couple years. It was great.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I woke up one day, out of nowhere \u2014 nothing happened, I didn\u2019t see anything, read anything \u2014 I just woke up one day and went, ‘I don\u2019t want to get in a helicopter anymore.’ And I sold it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo (with racing) I think one day I\u2019ll just wake up and go, \u2018You know what? I think that was it. I think that was the last one.\u2019 I really feel it\u2019ll be that way.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s been like a faucet I\u2019ve been slowly turning off as I went and ran those Xfinity Series races once a year, and now the Late Model races. I\u2019m just kind of slowly turning that faucet off until I feel like I\u2019m ready to shut it off entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This ride is set to be piloted by current Craftsman Truck Series star Rajah Caruth next season<\/a>, who will be taking on a part-time role with JRM. However, the driver announcement seemed to tease a second \u201cAll-Star\u201d driver in the No. 88, which remains publicly unknown.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s founder and podcast host, iRacing\u2019s executive director, as well as his broadcasting roles with Amazon Prime and TNT, among other positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. may have walked away from full-time racing after the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,14056,9397,2332,634,112121,82,723],"class_list":["post-237377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dale-earnhardt-jr","tag-jr-motorsports","tag-motorsport-section","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-retirement","tag-sports","tag-xfinity-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}