BRISTOL, Tenn. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he anticipates that tonight’s Xfinity Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway will be his final series race to at least 2026.
Earnhardt, who turns 50 in October, said Friday afternoon that there is no sponsor requirement that he race next year.
“I’m not planning on racing next year,” Earnhardt said of the Xfinity Series. “I’ll be foolish to say 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 and be absolutely willing to sign up for anything that might be beneficial to JR Motorsports.”
He said he expects he will miss racing in the series next year “terribly, regret that I didn’t race and probably in 2026 find me somewhere that I can go compete in the Xfinity Series again but right now I don’t have any plans. But that’s kind of the way I like it. If a partner comes together with a package that helps one of the other cars fill out multiple races that we have some inventory, I’m absolutely on board to do a race for that reason alone.”
Friday night’s Xfinity race is Earnhardt’s first of the season. He ran twice last year, competing at Bristol and Homestead late in the season.
Earnhardt will be in the No. 88 car at Bristol. Connor Zilisch drove that car to the win last weekend at Watkins in his Xfinity Series debut.
As Earnhardt looks ahead to what’s next in his career, he said he’s still open to JR Motorsports fielding a Cup operation.
“You just never know that when the phone rings what’s going to be on the other end of that call these days especially,” he said. “There’s a ton of new interest that’s coming into the sport and with the new (charter) agreement, that’ll churn a bunch of potential partners that have been kind of looking at the sport and waiting on that agreement to happen to see really where the dollars net out. We may be able to latch on to some of that momentum and some of those happenings. We may not.
” ... We’re just kind of like hanging out. If it doesn’t happen, I don’t know if it will be a massive regret of mine.”
