Earlier this week, Dale Earnhardt Jr. supercharged the NASCAR rumor mill by reposting onto his X (formerly Twitter) timeline a 2023 post from Trackhouse Racing. The post was from the team, announcing Zane Smith as their newest hire.
Of course, Smith and the organization later parted ways after a short stint with Spire, and he never actually drove for Trackhouse in the Cup Series.
Well, Earnhardt's repost immediately made people believe that something was in the works, and that Zane could be on his way back to Trackhouse. The team is looking for a new driver in 2028 to replace Connor Zilisch, who recently signed with Hendrick Motorsports for that season and beyond.
But it turns out that it wasn't that deep at all. Earnhardt simply didn't realize it was an old post, and he himself thought Trackhouse had just re-signed Smith, who currently competes for Front Row Motorsports.
On the Bless Your 'Hardt podcast with wife Amy, he explained.
Dale accidentally created a NASCAR conspiracy theory. https://t.co/YcaK26UlHc pic.twitter.com/kO29sS3JYa
— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) September 18, 2026
Three years ago, Trackhouse signed Zane Smith to some sort of future contract. Someone retweeted it. I looked at it, read it, and thought, 'oh well that's a good response to Zilisch.' And it never really occurred to me that this was three years ago.
"I had a tinge of skepticism, right? I was like, I'm not real sure -- I looked at everything but the date. I looked at the Trackhouse handle to see if this is a parody account ... I'm like, it checks out, okay. Hit retweet and an hour later, Elijah is like 'dude, did you mean to retweet this?' And he's like, 'it's from three years ago.'"
Earnhardt replied, saying: "Oh! Yeah, well now this make sense."
Also, everyone including Earnhardt got a kick out of seeing the top comment on the resurfaced post, as it was Carson Hocevar congratulated Zane Smith on the signing. Those two are not on good terms at the moment, and Zane has been very open in his disdain for Hocevar in recent months.
