Dale Earnhardt Jr. on why testing at Daytona doesn’t make him want to come back to NASCAR Cup Series, Daytona 500

Dale Jr. likes being back behind the wheel, but not that much.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is happy when he has the chance to get behind the wheel of a NASCAR stock car — whether that’s his one-off Xfinity Series race every season or testing, like he did on Tuesday and Wednesday at Daytona International Speedway for Hendrick Motorsports.

In fact, Earnhardt said he texted Chad Knaus, Hendrick’s VP of competition, half a dozen times to see if he could hit the track for this week’s organizational test of NASCAR’s Next Gen car, which makes its official debut at the season-opening Daytona 500 next month. And with multiple Hendrick drivers competing at the Chili Bowl Nationals in Tulsa this week, things worked out for the 15-time most popular driver.

But although Earnhardt — who retired from full-time NASCAR Cup Series racing in 2017 — said he enjoyed his time testing the new car, zooming around the iconic Daytona track had “no impact” on making him want to return to NASCAR’s premier series or attempt a one-off Daytona 500.

Addressing the media this week, Dale Jr. explained:

“It’s a long story, but I’m old, 47 years old. And take a guy like William Byron. He’s young, he’s a risk taker, and I’m done taking risks. I’ve got two little girls that I love being around, and I put my wife through a lot to race — half of my career that she was with me. She put everything in her role on pause for eight or 10 years while we did all that, and I just don’t know that, at 47 years old, I would be willing to take the necessary risks out on the race track that a young guy like William Byron is willing to do. …

“I think once you get to a certain age, you just — if you’re not willing to go out there and put it all on the line, I don’t think you need to be competing. So I don’t know if I really have that instinct anymore. Plus, you’ve just got other things you want to do.”

After getting behind the wheel of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, he unofficially finished as high as third in one of the practice sessions.

Earnhardt — who will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame next week — speculated that as drivers age, maybe their “willingness to put [themselves] in very dangerous situations time and time again” dissipates. However, he said he is hoping to have the opportunity to test more in the future after also previously testing the Next Gen car at Bowman Gray Stadium’s short track in October. But that’s about it.

Well, that and the once annual Xfinity Series race for his own team, JR Motorsports, because he said the second-tier series has a “completely different vibe” and he doesn’t “feel that same concern about that instinctual risk-taking stuff.”

Earnhardt’s lone 2022 race is at Martinsville Speedway in April.

He continued explaining why he’s good with just testing and once-a-year Xfinity races:

“The Cup Series is elite. You don’t just show up and think you’re just gonna out there and compete. It’d be like an old retired football player just showing up for an NFL game and thinking he’s gonna go out there and compete with those guys. He’ll get destroyed.

“I remember when [Jamie] McMurray came back and ran a couple years ago for Spire [Motorsports], he got out and he told me, he said, ‘Man, I don’t remember it being that hard.’ So it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing.”

NASCAR’s 2022 season opening Daytona 500 is set for Sunday, Feb. 20, but the new Next Gen car will unofficially debut in the preseason exhibition event, The Clash at the Coliseum, on Feb. 6.

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