"Everything we do is driven by racing" - Kelley Earnhardt speaks her heart on carrying ‘the legacy of our family’

Kelley Earnhardt, daughter of the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt Sr., recently talked about racing, the Earnhardt family legacy, their successful team, JR Motorsports, and other related subjects.

Kelley was also a stock car driver in her youth but didn't pursue a career as such. Nowadays, she's CEO and co-owner of JR Motorsports, which currently sits fifth in the 2025 Xfinity Series championship. In 2020, she published "Drive: 9 Lessons to Win in Business and in Life", a book where she talks about leadership skills.

On Wednesday, she appeared on the NASCAR Daily podcast with Shannon Spake and talked about how she and her siblings were raised within the racing world, how every aspect of their lives was somehow entangled with racing and still is, in one way or another.

"We are racers, we grew up in it, we were born into it we grew up with it, and we know a lot of things but this is what we're passionate about. This is what we know. So, everything that we do is driven by, you know, racing, and carrying on the legacy of our family," Kelley Earnhardt said.

She then went on talking about what "fills her cup", to which she answered that she makes trucker hats.

"I have gotten into making trucker hats. I had our licensing group make like patches for JR Motorsports and for our car number," Kelley added (10:58 onward).

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Dale Jr. on Kelley Earnhardt's early racing career in 90s

In 2009, David Newton, a NASCAR insider for ESPN, talked to Kelley Earnhardt and her brother Dale Jr. about how she could have been a talented race-car driver if the circumstances at the time had been better for women in the category.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. expressed his confidence in Kelley making it big in motorsports under a different environment.

"She (Kelley Earnhardt) could have had a lot of opportunities had it been a different environment and a different culture and a different climate. She was hardheaded and tough and drove hard. She would eventually have polished her abilities to where she would have been a pretty good race car driver at the higher level," Earnhardt Jr. said.

More than a decade later, Danica Patrick went on to race both IndyCar and NASCAR with Stewart-Haas Racing. Although Patrick didn't win any Cup Series contests, she became the first woman to lead the Great American Race. Her best result was precisely at Daytona Beach, Florida, where she managed to finish P8. To this day, her impact on NASCAR, a male-dominated sport, is still felt.

Unfortunately, fans will never know how good Kelley Earnhardt could have been, but her future and that of JRM are certainly very bright. Next up for Kelley and her team is the Phoenix Raceway on Saturday, March 8.