NASCAR: Is Dale Earnhardt Jr. a first-ballot Hall of Famer?

By Dominick Capolupo | Feb 10, 2020

Dale Earnhardt Jr., Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images) /

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is set to be eligible to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2021. Will he make it in his first year of eligibility?

Going into 2021, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be eligible to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. This comes after a bunch of changes were made to the Hall of Fame selection process. Instead of five people being inducted into the Hall of Fame each year, it will only be three per year starting next year.

What will make it even more difficult for candidates to go in as first-ballot Hall of Famers now is the fact that the three yearly inductees will be divided into two groups. Two will be voted in through the Modern Era Ballot and one will be voted in through the Pioneer Ballot.

The Modern Era Ballot will consist of competitors whose careers in NASCAR started within the last 60 years. Those competitors will be allowed to be on the ballot for 10 years before they are removed from the list of contemporary stars.

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A driver must be retired for three seasons while a crew chief has to have at least 10 years of experience and be retired for at least two years. This means that drivers such as Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth will also be eligible for induction along with Earnhardt in 2021.

It is not going to be easy for Earnhardt to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, especially with only two competitors in the Modern Era Ballot being nominated each year.

Edwards has numbers that stand out more than Earnhardt’s. In 186 fewer starts in the Cup Series, he earned 28 wins compared to Earnhardt’s 26. Edwards also has two second place finishes in the championship standings, including a tie in 2011 when he lost to Tony Stewart due to Stewart having more wins. Earnhardt’s best finish was third in 2003.

Kenseth is a Cup Series champion and a 39-time Cup Series race winner. It is hard to see him not going in as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, so that likely takes away one spot from Earnhardt right off the bat.

In the 16 years during which he ran every race in the Cup Series, Earnhardt finished outside the top 10 in the championship standings nine times, which is more than he finished inside the top 10.

He made 631 starts in the Cup Series and scored 26 wins, 149 top five finishes (23.6%) and 260 top 10 finishes (41.2%). Out of those 26 wins, nearly half of them (10) came at the two restrictor plate tracks: Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.

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It is tough to make a case for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to get into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, especially with the reduction of yearly inductees. He did win consecutive Xfinity Series championships in 1998 and 1999, and winning a championship in any of the top three series is impressive; that could propel at least some hope for him in his first year of eligibility.

But JR Nation may have to wait a few years before their driver gets inducted, as the likes of Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards appear to be more deserving of that honor.