NASCAR: 3 hints about Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s 2021 plans
By Asher Fair
Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave us three hints regarding where he will compete for JR Motorsports in the 2021 NASCAR Xfinity Series season.
Ever since retiring from full-time NASCAR Cup Series competition following the 2017 season, 15-time Most Popular Driver Award winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. has competed in one race in each Xfinity Series season for JR Motorsports, the team he co-owns.
He is set to do so again in 2021, despite the retirement rumors which abounded after his made his 2020 start at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
While there are under two weeks to go until the start of the new season, the 46-year-old Kannapolis, North Carolina native has yet to confirm where he will compete in 2021.
That is, he has yet to confirm it directly.
Based on what he has told Beyond the Flag among other JR Motorsports confirmations, it’s safe to say that there’s only one option that makes sense.
Here’s what he recently told us in an exclusive interview that was centered around one of his new partnerships.
“It’s not going to be Martinsville where I wanted to go. Hellmann’s and the guys, they need a little bit of time to sort of activate the sponsorship and get their money’s worth, and we need to allow them to be able to maximize that. For what we ask of them, they deserve that much from us. And they cannot activate in time to be able to run the first Martinsville race, so that knocks that one off the list, because Martinsville is where I wanted to go.
“I do not want to run that last Martinsville race because that’s in the middle of the playoffs and I don’t want to be any part of that storyline, so I’m going to completely avoid any of those races in the playoffs next year. It’s somewhere that I’ve raced before in the last couple of years. I’m sure some of you guys can kind of guess where it might be, but I’m really looking forward to it because I love being behind the wheel.”
Here are three hints.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Hint #1 – He’s been there recently.
“It’s somewhere that I’ve raced before in the last couple of years.”
Assuming he is referring to the tracks where he has competed in the Xfinity Series in recent years, that leaves only three options: Richmond Raceway, where he finished in fourth place in 2018, Darlington Raceway, where he finished in fifth in 2019, and Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he finished in fifth in 2020.
But which of those three tracks is it?