Kerry Earnhardt Set For Historic Stock Car Racing Return at Age 55

Newsweek

12-06-2025

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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Former NASCAR driver and the eldest son of Dale Earnhardt Sr., Kerry Earnhardt, is set to race in a stock car in the Grand National Super Series this weekend at Tri-County Speedway in Granite Falls, North Carolina.
Kerry will be a reserve driver for AJ Henriksen, who won't be racing this weekend. The 55-year-old driver will take the wheel of ECC Motorsports' No. 46 car, which marks his first race since 2009.
Having raced for more than a decade in ARCA and the NASCAR Xfinity Series from 1998 to 2009, Kerry is expected to get up to speed in no time. Over his Xfinity Series career, he had six top-10 finishes in 72 starts. His track record at ARCA was impressive too, considering he won four out of 11 races using former DEI Cup equipment.
Kerry raced briefly in the Cup and Truck Series before his retirement. In 2016, he drove his father's No.3 car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
His half-brother, Dale Jr., shared an update on X, announcing Kerry's racing duty for this weekend.
Holy smokes this is amazing news. https://t.co/EWoY1iZ3vQ — Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) June 12, 2025
Dale Jr. also revealed in his recent podcast an upcoming show based on his father, Dale Sr. Newsweek Sports reported his comments from his Dale Jr. Download podcast. He said:
Kerry Earnhardt from the United States driving the #40 Channel Lock Galaxy Motorsports Chevrolet Monte Carlo during the 1999 NASCAR Busch Grand National Series Yellow Freight 300 race on 13th March 1999 at the Atlanta...
Kerry Earnhardt from the United States driving the #40 Channel Lock Galaxy Motorsports Chevrolet Monte Carlo during the 1999 NASCAR Busch Grand National Series Yellow Freight 300 race on 13th March 1999 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Hampton, Georgia, United States. More"It's just a show that I started. I got these two scrapbooks from my aunt when my grandmother passed away. We went to her house, we were kind of looking through some of the things - photos and all kinds of stuff - and there were these two scrapbooks that my aunt made.
"They are literally, one is from the '79 year and one's from the '80 Cup season. She cut out every article and everything. So right there in front of me, man, is basically this kind of book of, like, 'here's what happened to Dad.'
"I just never really dove into that real deeply to get details about that particular couple of years when he drove for Rod Osterlund and landed his first full-time ride in NASCAR.
"So we decided to make a series, Becoming Earnhardt, to detail what's in those scrapbooks and the things that we learned. It's pretty interesting."
Dale Jr. also mentioned a controversy from 1980 that will be featured in the show. He added:
"1980 is what this particular season of Becoming Earnhardt will be focusing on, and there is a high-profile split with crew chief Jake Elder. How Jake handles that in the media is wild—Jake goes off the rails, Jake comes back on the rails—it's just wild.
"And Dad and Cale get nippy in the media late in the year. Cale actually is real critical of Dad on the racetrack. Just watching that whole thing—kind of reliving it, putting yourself in the moment of going back through that particular year—I think it's really fun for me.
"I'm a nostalgia freak. I love the history of the sport. So it is a great time for me, a good excuse for me to dive more into learning about that particular part of Dad's life. I lived a lot of the late '80s and the '90s. I wasn't even in Dad's life in 1980. I was not living with him yet."