NASCAR: What number will Dale Jr. use for his return?
By Randy Smith
Dale Jr. announced that he will run the Martinsville spring race in the 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, but a minor announcement came along with that.
In the 2022 Xfinity Series season, NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. is set to make another one-off appearance.
The co-owner of JR Motorsports is set to compete in the race at Martinsville Speedway on Friday, April 8, he confirmed last week.
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Earnhardt has made the most of his one-off appearances in the Xfinity Series since his retirement from full-time Cup Series racing in 2017. Though he has yet to earn a win in his return, the 47-year-old Kannapolis, North Carolina native has scored three top five finishes in four starts.
In his first race back since retirement at Richmond Raceway in 2018, Earnhardt released a short film about coming back, titled “The Return“. The short film talks about his journey into retirement and now coming back as a part-time driver for his own Xfinity Series team.
Though Earnhardt’s return has become an annual occurrence, a change in his number was announced for 2022.
The past three years, the two-time Daytona 500 champion has driven the #8 Chevrolet, not only a throwback to his grandfather Ralph and father Dale Sr., but most importantly a throwback to himself when he found popularity with the number during his time driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI) from 2000 to 2007.
This time around, Dale Jr. will return to the #88 Chevrolet. The number 88 was his number during his time with Hendrick Motorsports from 2008 from 2017. The number change came after DEI owner Teresa Earnhardt vetoed Dale Jr. from taking the number with him when he left the family business.
Earnhardt did use the #88 Chevrolet for his first post-retirement one-off appearance in the Xfinity Series in 2018.
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With JR Motorsports set to have their first full-time driver of the #8 Chevrolet in Josh Berry, the need to field a fifth car has returned, and Earnhardt and the team will do just that when they bring back the other number with which most fans associate the “Pied Piper of Daytona” early next April.