Newly Retired Dale Jr is Grand Marshal for Daytona 500

Dale Earnhardt Junior is returning to Daytona for Speedweek this year … not as a driver but as an honorary race official. Earnhardt, who retired as a full-time NASCAR competitor at the end of the 2017 season, will serve as grand marshal for the sixtieth running of “The Great American Race” on February 18th at Daytona International Speedway. In that role, he will give the command to start engines for the first points race of the new season. In his twenty-year career, “Junior” won seventeen races on the famed two-point-five-mile Daytona oval – a total surpassed only by his father, who claimed thirty-four wins there … and Tony Stewart (nineteen) … Before Earnhardt steps to the microphone and gives the command, Rascal Flatts will perform a pre-race concert. All fans who purchase a pre-race pit pass for the Daytona 500 will be able to view the pre-race show from the grassy tri-oval area along the track’s frontstretch.