TNT Sports' portion of the NASCAR Cup Series broadcast schedule wrapped up two weekends ago at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the Brickyard 400, and with that, so did Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s 10 races in the broadcast booth for 2026.
Earnhardt joined both Amazon Prime Video and TNT for their respective five-race stints when the new seven-year, $7.7 billion broadcast deal went into effect ahead of the 2025 season. He had previously been in the NBC Sports booth from 2018 to 2023 before taking a year off in 2024.
What Earnhardt did not take a year off from in 2024 was driving a race car. Despite retiring from full-time Cup Series competition at the end of the 2017 season, he returned for at least one Xfinity Series (now O'Reilly Auto Parts Series) race each year from 2018 to 2024 for his JR Motorsports team.
The 2025 season was his first with zero NASCAR national series starts since 1995, and he only made his Busch (O'Reilly) Series debut (and his national series debut) in 1996.
He has no starts planned for 2026, and unlike in 2025, when nephew Jeffrey Earnhardt ran select races for Sam Hunt Racing in the O'Reilly Series, there are currently no plans for any Earnhardts to run any national series races this year.
If that remains the case, it would mark the first time since 1974 without an Earnhardt in a NASCAR national series.
Earnhardt 51-year family NASCAR streak at risk
Jeffrey currently owns the longest active family streak at 17 years, dating back to 2009, after Dale Jr.'s ended at 29 a year ago.
Bobby Dale Earnhardt set out to run full-time in the ARCA Menards Series schedule this year, and he has competed in 12 of 13 races thus far, but he hasn't run a national series race since he competed in select O'Reilly Series races in 2019.
He's eighth in the ARCA standings with a top finish of ninth, driving for Rise Racing with Earnhardt-Shearer Racing. Despite running the season's first 12 races, he did not compete in the most recent race at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, and he won't be in the No. 89 Chevrolet for all seven remaining races this season either.
Then there's "The Intimidator", whose 27-year streak stretched from 1975 until his death in the 2001 Daytona 500. Dale Earnhardt made his Cup Series debut in 1975, which began this family streak, and he competed in the series each year until his passing. He also ran select O'Reilly Series races each year from 1982 to 1994.
Dale Sr.'s father was also a NASCAR driver, but he did not play a role in this streak. Ralph Earnhardt competed at the Cup level for six total seasons (1956, 1957, and 1961 to 1964).
The best chance to keep this streak alive and extend it to 52 years would either have to be Dale Jr. returning for another one-off with JRM, now that his broadcasting duties are in the books for another year and he still hasn't retired from racing as a whole, or Jeffrey returning for select races, which he is reportedly still trying to do.
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