{"id":303239,"date":"2025-11-24T06:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T06:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303239\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T06:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T06:36:10","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-quietly-broke-nascar-streak-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303239\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. quietly broke NASCAR streak – Motorsport – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dale Earnhardt Jr. saw his almost three-decade streak come to an end in 2025.<\/p>\n

Since making his NASCAR<\/a> debut in 1996, Earnhardt<\/a> has raced in at least one NASCAR race even after he retired from full-time racing in 2017. That said, the NASCAR legend would compete in the Xfinity Series, keeping his streak of races competed in alive \u2014 but 2025 marked a change.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Earnhardt raced at Bristol, finishing in the top 10 in the Xfinity race. However, 2025 presented a new opportunity for Earnhardt, who recently shared that he was nervous about his team returning to the Daytona 500 in 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the first time since the mid-1990s, Earnhardt did not compete in NASCAR races at any level. Although the legend no longer runs full-time, he often makes time to race at least once a year.<\/p>\n

Though he did not announce he had fully retired from racing altogether, the 51-year-old has enjoyed success at the helm of JR Motorsports. Mentoring rising star Connor Zilisch, Earnhardt and JR Motorsports came one race away from winning the Xfinity Series championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

That said, the NASCAR legend explained how he was feeling the nerves ahead of JR Motorsports’ highly anticipated return to the Daytona 500. In late November, Earnhardt’s team announced they would be running in the historic race, with Justin Allgaier piloting a Traveller Whiskey-sponsored car.<\/p>\n

In a recent episode of the Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt explained what was going through his mind as he and his team prepared for the race. \u201cI\u2019m nervous because we\u2019re going to have a new body,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnytime a manufacturer gets a new body, they don\u2019t go to Daytona and perform better. You\u2019re figuring out kind of what makes that body perform at a track like that. I don\u2019t know details, I just shoot it straight. Every time a manufacturer changes the body, they\u2019re trying their best in every way, when a new body is coming in, to make their cars more competitive at the tracks that we race the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re always trying to put a character line in there or fudge the quarter panel, or whatever the nose in such a way they\u2019re working with the teams to go, \u2018Hey man, this is what we need, this would make us better. Well, let\u2019s see if we can get it passed through. Will NASCAR accept it?\u2019<\/p>\n

“NASCAR will run it through some tests and aero and stuff like that to make sure it\u2019s not like this massive advantage comparable to the other manufacturers.\u201d What’s more, Kelley Earnhardt, the legend’s sister and co-owner of JR Motorsports, explained she and Earnhardt are always looking for opportunities to potentially race in the Cup Series.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould we like to be Cup racing? We certainly would,” she said to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio<\/a>. “It’s something from a legacy standpoint, and everything that we built, I think it would be really cool for us to experience, but the right opportunity just hasn’t come forward yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. saw his almost three-decade streak come to an end in 2025. Since making his NASCAR…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,14056,2332,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-303239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-dale-earnhardt-jr","11":"tag-motorsport-section","12":"tag-nascar","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303239","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=303239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}