For the third straight season since retiring from racing in NASCAR full-time, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is getting back in the car for a one-off race.
And this time, JR Nation won’t have to wait until the after the season’s halfway point to see their favorite driver back behind the wheel.
Earnhardt — who’s now an analyst for NBC Sports, which broadcasts the second half of the NASCAR Cup Series season — will drive the No. 8 Chevrolet for his XFINITY Series team, JR Motorsports, in the second-tier series’ race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in March, the team announced Tuesday. Like his lone XFINITY races in 2018 and 2019, his car will have a Hellmann’s paint scheme, but this one is bright yellow.
https://t.co/K4R6p8rgMQ pic.twitter.com/W4UZTDGVZy
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) January 14, 2020
Last season, Earnhardt’s one-off race was during Darlington Raceway’s throwback weekend in August. He ran a paint scheme that honored his late father, Dale Earnhardt Sr., and finished fifth.
In 2018, he returned to the track the season after officially retiring from the Cup Series and competed at Richmond Raceway, finishing fourth.
Before racing at Darlington in 2019, Earnhardt said he was interested in competing at Homestead during the 2020 season if his sponsor option was picked up. However, for the first time since 2002, the 1.5-mile track won’t host NASCAR’s championship weekend in November with the season finale moving to Phoenix Raceway and the sport traveling to south Florida in March.
In 17 starts at Homestead in the Cup Series, Dale Jr. walked away with one top-5 finish and two top 10s, and in five starts in the XFINITY Series, he similarly has one top five and three top 10s.
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