With Jeffrey Earnhardt running three races for Sam Hunt Racing at Talladega Superspeedway, Nashville Superspeedway, and Bristol Motor Speedway during the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, it extended the streak of an Earnhardt competing in NASCAR at the national level to an impressive 51 consecutive seasons.
Jeffrey, however, was the only Earnhardt who competed in NASCAR in 2025, something that had never before been true during his 17-year career.
That is because Dale Earnhardt Jr., who made his NASCAR debut in 1996, did not compete in a single race for the first time since his career began.
Dale Jr. runs zero NASCAR races, first time since 1995
Dale Jr. made his Xfinity Series (then-Busch Series) debut in 1996, and he made his Cup Series debut in 1999. He ran full-time in Cup from 2000 through his retirement in 2017, and he hasn't been back since.
But even during his Cup Series career, Earnhardt competed regularly in the Xfinity Series, skipping only the 2000 season entirely after winning the 1998 and 1999 championships prior to his jump to Cup.
After Earnhardt retired from full-time Cup Series competition in 2017, he still made a habit of competing in at least one Xfinity Series race each year. Despite contemplating a full retirement after running at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2020, he returned again in 2021 and 2022, and he ran two races for the first time since 2017 in 2023.
But his 2024 start at Bristol is still his most recent, as he did not compete for the JR Motorsports team he co-owns at any point during the 2025 Xfinity Series season. It marked the first time since 1995 that Dale Jr. did not compete in any NASCAR race during a given year.
To put that in perspective, it was Jeff Gordon who won the first of his four Cup Series championships that year. Dale Earnhardt Sr., who had won his seventh championship the year before, finished runner-up in the standings.
The 51-year-old Kannapolis, North Carolina native hasn't officially retired from the occasional one-off, but the team did run the No. 9 Chevrolet part-time, in addition to their four full-time entries, in 2025, so he probably could have run at least once had he really wanted to.
In 2026, JR Motorsports are again set to run the No. 9 car part-time, and they are also set to rotate the No. 88 car between Rajah Caruth and another driver (or drivers) not yet named. It's entirely possible Dale Jr. could be one of those drivers, but perhaps it's unlikely after how 2025 panned out.
As for the rest of the active drivers in the Earnhardt family, Bobby Dale Earnhardt ran two races in the ARCA Menards Series with Rise Motorsports, and he is set to run the full schedule in 2026.
Jeffrey's plans for 2026 have not yet been solidified, but according to his website, he is "exploring opportunities in all series for 2026 and expects to have news to share with fans in the coming months."
The 2026 O'Reilly Auto Parts Series season is scheduled to get underway at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday, February 14, with live coverage set to be provided by the CW Network.