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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he intends to race “for more years,” but NASCAR’s most popular driver also said he won’t sit down to discuss his contract with team owner Rick Hendrick until he’s confident his health isn’t an issue.
Earnhardt, 42, missed the final 18 races of the 2016 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season while recovering from a concussion suffered at mid-season.
He is in the final year of his contract as driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
“I told Rick (Hendrick) that I would like to get a couple of races, a couple of months under my belt to get confidence in my health,” Earnhardt said Saturday at Daytona International Speedway, site of next week’s season-opening Daytona 500.
“This is the only reason I feel that way. There’s no underlying crap about it. When I got hurt last year, what I saw it put the company through, how I saw it frustrate certain aspects of the company — maybe not frustrate but it put a strain on our relationships. Our partners were worried about my future, Rick and everybody was worried. I don’t want to do that again.
“I want to get some races under my belt and get confidence in my health before I can commit to him. I don’t want to make him a promise that I can’t deliver on.
“Once I feel like, ‘You know what? I think I’m good. I think I can withstand the wear and tear of driving these cars to do a couple more years,’ I’m ready to do it. Because I want to race; I want to be here and I want to race.”
Earnhardt joined Hendrick Motorsports in 2008 after eight seasons with Dale Earnhardt Inc., the company founded by his father, the seven-time series champion and inaugural NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee. Nine of his 26 career victories have come since the move to HMS.
In addition to competing for HMS, Earnhardt also co-owns JR Motorsports, a race organization that fields four teams in NASCAR’s XFINITY Series.
He will make his first start since his injury next week here at DIS. He’s a two-time winner of the Daytona 500 and considered one of the sport’s best on the big superspeedways, where NASCAR mandates the use of restrictor plates to limit speeds.
Retirement has been on his mind, Earnhardt admitted, even before last season’s setback. But he said the injury made him realize that it might now be best to put off such thoughts until he knows his health isn’t a concern. Earnhardt said in December that he hoped to sit down and discuss a contract extension before the ’17 season got underway.
“I’ve been trying over the last year or two to put a number on it, say, ‘This is when I’m going to retire,'” he said. “‘This will be the year or the day or the age.’ But I’ve decided that maybe it’s best that I don’t. Considering my health, I can’t even think about putting a date on it because I don’t know what’s going to happen to me going forward.
“I want to get a couple of races under my belt, a couple of months, and then we’ll sit down and say, ‘You know, if everything is going great and we haven’t had any issues, I’m confident to continue to race.'”
Earnhardt has twice signed five-year contracts with HMS – the first from 2008 through ’12 and the most recent, an extension which ran from 2013-17.
Hendrick Motorsports also fields Monster Energy Series teams for seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne and Chase Elliott.