Dale Earnhardt Jr. Snares Top 5 In Xfinity At Homestead

Dale Earnhardt Jr. competed in only two NASCAR Xfinity Series races this year, but the 49-year-old driver showed he hasn’t lost his magic touch.

In Saturday’s Contender Boats 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Earnhardt Jr. produced a top-five finish, finishing 7.884-seconds behind JR Motorsports, the team he owns, teammate and race winner Sam Mayer.

“The car was not doing what I wanted it to do, but we worked on it,” Earnhardt Jr. says. “I sent us the wrong way at the first break. Once the guys figured out what we needed to do the car got better.”

Earnhardt Jr. took the blame for putting JR Motorsports teammate Josh Berry into the wall on lap 171 in the 200-lap race.

“I didn’t know he was out there,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “My spotter was saying all the right things, but what I was hearing was something different.”

Last month, Earnhardt Jr. led once for 47 laps at Bristol and appeared headed for a top-10 finish before his car developed a problem and caught fire. He escaped with a burn on his uniform leg and had to settle for a 30^th-place finish. However, he joined JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier in victory lane.

While in the infield media center for his post-race interview as the winning car owner, Earnhardt Jr. said he would compete in one Xfinity Series race next year. He then said his older sister Kelley Earnhardt Miller, the CEO of JR Motorsports, had told him she wanted him to stop racing after 2024, but he winked and said he thought it was up for negotiation.

Earnhardt Miller says that’s “not exactly our conversation.” She says it’s always up to her younger brother and business partner how many races he wants to run.