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Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes his 1 race in 2022 is at Martinsville but explains why that might not happen

Last NASCAR season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he wasn’t sure if he’d continue to compete in one second-tier Xfinity Series race on the schedule. And that was after his lone 2020 race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Well, Earnhardt is back for another one-off race this season, and it sounds like he plans to continue racing once a year. His one race of 2021 is Saturday’s Go Bowling 250 at Richmond Raceway, and he’ll basically go straight from the track to NBC’s broadcast booth for the premier Cup Series race Saturday night.

Dale Jr. recently shared why he’s racing at Richmond and what factors are considered when he decides which track he’ll compete on for his one race each year.

Via FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass, Earnhardt explained:

“I love short track racing, so with working with Hellmann’s, they want to really focus on markets in the southeast. So we’re going to look at race tracks in the southern part of the United States. Texas is on the table — as far west as Texas. We know Homestead’s a little bit far south, but I convinced them to let me do that race last year. That’s probably a little bit too far for what their demographic or what they’re aiming for. So there’s some influence there for the partnership with Hellmann’s on where we can race and where they prefer I race.”

Unsurprisingly, a lot of where Dale Jr. competes comes down to his partnership with Hellmann’s, which has been the primary sponsor for the three Xfinity races he’s competed since retiring from full-time racing at the end of the 2017 Cup season. However, for Saturday’s Richmond race, Unilever is the primary sponsor with a 9/11 tribute paint scheme.

Earnhardt continued and was adamant about his one-off race not being part of the Xfinity Series playoffs, which begin this year on Sept. 25 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In addition to Homestead in 2020, he also raced at Darlington Raceway in 2019 and Richmond in 2018.

Dale Jr. said he hopes to race at Martinsville Speedway in 2022, but he elaborated on why that might not work out. He said:

“I don’t want to race in the playoffs. I don’t want to be in the way or in any way influence anybody’s championship run. Now, I know we’re close to the playoffs, and there is the potential that something could happen that I could be involved in that could affect someone’s championship run or as they’re heading into the playoffs. But I’ll try to do my best not to be a part of any of that, but I definitely don’t want to race during the championship races.

“And going back to Hellmann’s, they don’t like to activate early in the season. Doing Homestead, again, that early in the year last year was very challenging for them to be able to accomplish the goals they want to accomplish outside of the race car in activating the partnership and the sponsorship. So, that really puts us in a very small window of a few months in the season. And then when you think about the region they want to be in, that whittles down the tracks to literally just one or two or three choices.

“So I would have probably preferred to go to Martinsville early in the year, but it was just too soon for them to be able to accomplish what they want to accomplish on the marketing side of the deal. So I don’t really know the details on that.

“But I’m gonna aim for Martinsville again next year and hopefully make that work for them. But if not, we’ll get back to looking at all the tracks on the map and seeing which ones make sense. So that’s why we landed on Richmond again for this year.”

In Earnhardt’s prior three Xfinity races since retiring from full-time racing, he’s never finished outside the top-5 drivers. He finished fourth at Richmond in 2018, and he finished fifth at both Darlington and Homestead in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

Update: Earnhardt finished 14th at Richmond on Saturday.

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