Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Stay Busy and Ready for Return to NBC

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is not in the NBC booth this year, but he remains busy with media, business, and racing pursuits. He will return to NBC next season for 10 races, five on Amazon Prime Video and five on TNT.

Fans are accustomed to seeing Dale Earnhardt Jr. as part of the NBC telecasts, but the NASCAR legend is not returning to the booth this year. However, he will be back for 10 races next season (points races 13-22 on the Cup schedule), five on Amazon Prime Video and five on TNT.

In the meantime, Earnhardt has been keeping busy with various projects. He recently attended a fan day at JR Motorsports, his race team, and spoke to FOX Sports about his current endeavors and future plans.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Stay Busy and Ready for Return to NBC

"I figure people are wondering what in the world is Dale Earnhardt Jr. doing since he's not in the booth this year," Earnhardt said.

"What am I doing? Well, this year I turn 50 in October, so I've been traveling a lot. I went to Europe to hang out with Jimmie Johnson, Casey Mears, and Matt Kenseth and all our wives. We had a good little trip. We're probably going to go back to Europe later in the year. We've got a few trips planned."

"We're tuning in—we're watching all the races trying to stay on top of what's going on in the sport. We're still doing all of our Dirty Mo' Media podcasting. And we're here at JR Motorsports every week creating all our content for that."

"I'm racing our little late model car here and there. I'm going to run the Xfinity car at Bristol again this year, just like we did last year with Hellmann's, and then I'm running three-to-five late model stock races in the CARS Tour and the Advanced Auto Parts weekly series that NASCAR has. It's all really a lot of fun."

Earnhardt admitted that he misses the broadcast but is excited about his return to NBC next season.

"I'm going to start doing some mock runs...get in a room and pretend to broadcast the actual race that maybe NBC or FOX is doing," he said. "So, looking forward to that because I'm anxious to get some good chemistry going on with whoever's in the booth with me because we've got five races to get it right. We want to be right straight out of the gate with Amazon and TNT."

Earnhardt also discussed his future racing plans.

"I want to run my late model for a really long time," he said. "I imagine when I get to around 60, I'll be probably considering that that's probably too old to be out there battling with some of these younger guys."

"The Xfinity car? Every year, I say that—personally, but I don't really share this publicly—but every year, I pretty much feel like it could be my last. I'm going into this race at Bristol this year knowing that it might be the last one I run."

"There's nothing that really makes that decision. It's just last year was a lot of fun, led some laps. But it is a big commitment."

Earnhardt gave his thoughts on the NASCAR Cup Series racing at Iowa for the first time and the challenges with the short-track package.

"I think we're learning a lot. I've been very critical of the short-track package on my own content, Dirty Mo' Media, 'The Dale Jr. Download,'" he said.

"And fans have been critical, and everybody wants NASCAR to get it right, and everybody's got a different opinion, myself included—it's the car, it's this, it's that, and the other. But I think where we've kind of landed, at least it seems at the moment, is that we can certainly learn a lot by messing with a tire, and Goodyear seems to be willing to be a bit aggressive with the tire."

"And so I'm hoping that Goodyear can continue race by race to push the envelope on a softer compound and a tire that will give us the racing that we want."

"And honestly, man, I really thought that the all-star race was a really great step in the right direction. We saw a brand-new repave that was multi-groove. We've never seen that before and as many years as I can remember, a repaved racetrack that put on such great racing."

"I know it's hard to pass, but it's supposed to be hard to pass. It's never not going to be hard to pass, I can promise you that. The only time it's not hard to pass is when you're at the superspeedways, and you can get a draft and get around somebody. But everywhere else, it should be hard to pass."

"And so we're always going to be arguing over how much of hard-to-pass can we put up with. Any time you have multi-grooves like we had at Wilkesboro, that's a great thing. Hopefully, we continue to see that develop as we go further along the schedule and racing at these short tracks throughout the rest of the year [and] Goodyear continuing to push the tire and get more aggressive with the tire. Because I don't think the tracks are broken. And I don't really necessarily believe the car is broken."

Finally, Earnhardt discussed his involvement in charter negotiations.

"We're out of the charter business right now," he said.

"The sale of a charter, I would call it a cycle, right? Well, we missed this last cycle. We'll see what comes down the road. I'm almost feeling like that if I were to ever get involved in the Cup side, it would be like an investment—my personal monetary investment in something current."

"I would be open to talking to team owners about putting money into a particular singular charter and saying, 'Hey, I'm going to park an investment here in this charter. I'm leaving that for my generations down the road, my girls and what have you.'"

"It wouldn't be anything other than that. So I don't know if we'll ever have JR Motorsports physically owning charters, running a race team operating every facet of that. I think that that ship has sailed."