Which XFINITY Series race is Dale Earnhardt Jr. running this year?

Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t quite done with his NASCAR career, but he might only one more race. We tell you where it will be.

It’s still early in the post-Dale Earnhardt Jr. era of NASCAR, so much so that it takes the synapses a few times firing to remember that it’s Alex Bowman in the No. 88 Chevrolet and not Junior. Earnhardt will still be around the sport, both as an announcer the second half of the season with NBC Sports and as owner for the JR Motorsports NASCAR XFINITY Series teams.

But he’s also got at least one more race he’s planning on running for his own team. Earnhardt said as much late in his final Cup Series campaign, saying that because of sponsor obligations, he’d be back for a race or two in the XFINITY Series in 2018.

Junior has since revealed exactly what race that will be, while leaving the door ever so slightly ajar for more.

For those of you who might want to actually see Earnhardt behind the wheel again, the race in question is the Go Bowling 250 on Friday, Sep. 21. And yes, you can still buy tickets for it, at least at the time of this article (and XFINITY Series races don’t really sell out, so that will probably be true whenever you read this).

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Why Richmond Raceway? There are actually two reasons. One is that a short track offers much less of a chance of the kind of high-speed impact that could exacerbate Earnhardt’s problems with concussions. Yes, people do wreck at Richmond, but not at 190 mph.

The other reason that Junior has actually talked about himself is that despite his well-earned reputation for restrictor plate mastery, he’s always been formidable at Richmond, claiming multiple victories there in both of NASCAR’s top two series. In fact, the last victory of Dale Jr.’s career was an XFINITY Series race at Richmond in 2016.

Those facts will also undoubtedly help sweeten the deal for whoever might want to sponsor Earnhardt in what could be his honest to goodness last NASCAR race — not that we anticipate him having any issues with that. If you’re only going to watch one XFINITY Series race this year, we suggest you make it this one.