The 2025 NASCAR season-opening race weekend at Daytona International Speedway may not have actually featured an Earnhardt on the race track, though Dale Earnhardt Jr. did get to experience the Daytona 500 as a car owner for the first time.
But race week started off with an announcement that extends an Earnhardt family streak to 51 years.
Though the announcement did not include Saturday's United Rentals 300 Xfinity Series race at the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) high-banked Daytona Beach, Florida oval, Sam Hunt Racing announced the return of Jeffrey Earnhardt for the 2025 season.
Earnhardt drove the No. 26 Toyota for the team on a part-time basis in 2024, and he is set to make his season debut in the late April race at Talladega Superspeedway with sponsorship from ForeverLawn.
The 2025 season is set to be Jeffrey's 17th straight season in a NASCAR national series on some level, but perhaps more significantly, it is set to be the 51st straight season with an Earnhardt.
There hasn't been a season without an Earnhardt since 1974.
In 1975, Dale Earnhardt Sr. made his Cup Series debut, and he competed each year until he was killed in a last-lap Daytona 500 crash in 2001. He also competed in select Xfinity Series races each year from 1982 to 1994.
Dale Jr. made his Xfinity Series debut in 1996 and has competed on some level ever since. Since then, the only Xfinity Series season he missed completely was in 2000, which was his first year as a full-time Cup Series driver after making his debut in 1999. He retired from the Cup Series after the 2017 season.
Dale Jr. has competed in the Xfinity Series in at least one race each year since his Cup Series retirement, though he has not confirmed any starts yet for 2025.
Jeffrey, Dale Jr,'s nephew, is one of two other Earnhardts to appear in NASCAR from 1975 until now. He made his Xfinity Series debut in 2009 and has competed in the series in all but 2010, 2016, 2017, and 2018 since then. But in 2010 and 2011, he competed part-time in the Truck Series, and from 2015 to 2019, he made select Cup Series starts.
Bobby Dale, Jeffrey's brother, is the other. He made select Xfinity Series starts from 2017 to 2019.
Dale Sr.'s father, Ralph, also competed in NASCAR, but he is not a part of this five-decade streak. He competed in the Cup Series in 1956 and 1957, and then again from 1961 to 1964.