After 18 years behind the wheel racing in the professional circuit, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is announcing his retirement from racing.
The driver is holding a press conference that figures to be emotional at 3 p.m. EDT on Tuesday with his team members from Hendrick Motorsports. Watch a live stream of the press conference in the video at the top of the page.
His impending retirement was first announced in a statement issued by by Hendrick.
Dale Jr. has registered 603 career starts and 26 wins on the circuit. He started racing in the series in 1999 and was voted NASCAR’s most popular driver 14 years in a row by fans. He won the Daytona 500 in 2004 and 2014, the same race and track where his father, Dale Sr., was killed in 2001.
Dale Jr. drives the No. 88 Chevrolet SS in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup series for Hendrick and also participates in the Xfinity Series in the No. 88 Chevy Camaro for his own team, JR Motorsports. Before that, he drove the No. 8 Chevy for his father’s team at Dale Earnhardt, Inc. But turmoil with his stepmother, Teresa, led to him leaving the team in 2007 for Hendrick.
In his career, Dale Jr. has started at the pole 13 times in the cup series and has been in the top 10 finishers 253 times. His last cup win was in 2015 at the Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500.
But concussions in the later portions of his career proved to impact his ability to get behind the wheel in a healthy state. He missed a few races during the 2012 season after suffering a concussion in an October race at Talledega.
Dale Jr. was diagnosed with concussion-like symptoms in July 2016 and was forced to miss the second-half of the season as a result. He was replaced by Jeff Gordon and Alex Bowman in a few races after the concussions. He wasn’t medically cleared to return to racing until December 8, 2016 and started gearing up for the 2017 campaign.
Upon his return in the 2017 season, Dale Jr. qualified second for the Daytona 500, but was involved in a big wreck mid-way through the race, finishing in 37th place. After Daytona, he had a series of poor finishes, but finally got a top-five finish at Texas Motor Speedway April 9.
Dale Jr. will be looking to end his final season on a high note, and sent out a tweet acknowledging his Tuesday afternoon press conference with the hashtag #FinishStrong.
