NASCAR: Dale Jr shrugs off retirement talk

Dale Earnhardt Jr hopes to follow the example set by peers Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon in picking the right moment to hang up his helmet.

The 41-year-old is heading into the new Cup season on the back of some encouragingly resurgent form: having endured five years with just one win, he secured victory at Daytona in 2014 and added another three wins last year. While he says that he has no immediate plans to walk away, he admits that Stewart and Gordon have set an example by making their own decision to step back before the decision was made for them.

"I don't want to be here too long, [but] I don't want to [retire] too early," Earnhardt said. "You want to feel like the time's right."

According to Earnhardt, the recent upswing in results proves that he still has work to do before retirement becomes a serious consideration.

"I'd be a fool to turn this off right now," Earnhardt said. "To slow down this machine would take about a two-year plan. I will talk to Jeff and I'll talk to Tony about how they went about that decision and structured it. But I can't even imagine when that would be because things are going so well. We've got a job to do. Every year we keep getting better, we're racing better, we're winning. I feel like I've got to be here in that next step.

"If it flatlines, or I feel like I've flatlined or I feel like I'm part of the problem or I'm holding the team back, then we've got to start thinking about it. But everything's going in the right direction right now."