It has been widely assumed for a while that Dale Earnhardt Jr. would finish out his NASCAR driving career at Hendrick Motorsports, the organization he joined with much fanfare in 2008 following eight roller-coaster years with Dale Earnhardt Inc.
After all, Earnhardt Jr. has repeatedly expressed his affinity for team owner Rick Hendrick and the entire Hendrick organization, where he has thrived both personally and professionally over the past seven years.
As surprising is it might sound, though, Earnhardt Jr. apparently doesn't plan on Hendrick Motorsports being the last team for which he straps on a helmet and jumps in a NASCAR stock car. No, it seems that NASCAR's most popular driver actually intends for his last ride to come with JR Motorsports -- the company he started in 2006 and that fields two full-time Nationwide Series teams and one part-time Nationwide team but no Sprint Cup teams.
"I would like to race for that company one day, so I hope to keep it healthy until that opportunity presents itself -- whenever I'm done Cup racing -- to jump in a Nationwide car and do that for a couple of years in my own shop," Junior said on Friday at Kansas Speedway.
In other words, the third-generation driver plans to finish his NASCAR national series career right where he began it -- in the sport's No. 2 division, where he won back-to-back championships in 1998 and 1999 before making the jump to Sprint Cup in 2000.
So when will Earnhardt Jr. hang up his Sprint Cup helmet? Well, it sounds like even he doesn't know for sure, but the soon-to-be 40-year-old recently said he wouldn't mind racing another 10 years.
Who knew, until Friday, that they probably won't all be spent at Hendrick?
More must-reads: