Hamlin Blasts Childress' Grandson Following Texas Nationwide Race; Crashes Austin Dillon Into Pit Wall!
Current NASCAR
When folks talk about Dale Earnhardt and the #3, many forget (as you folks have already indicated) that the number was assigned to car owner, Richard Childress. Before he ran the #3, however, RC ran the #96.
When Wrangler took Dale and our sponsorship to RC for the final third of the 1981 season, it wasn't the Childress style #3 on the car, but the same stylized number font as the #2 that had been run on the Osterlund car.
During 1982 Childress fielded the Piedmont Airlines #3 for Ricky Rudd and used a totally different stylized #3.
When Wrangler and Dale rejoined Richard for 1984, Dale didn't want the car to look like the Bud Moore/Ricky Rudd # 15 Wrangler sponsored car and Richard wanted to still use a #3 like the one he had used on the Piedmont sponsored cars. The result, which debuted at Daytona in 1984, was one of the ugliest (IMHO) cars to ever grace a racetrack.
The appearance of that 1984 car was later changed to the look below, but still without the #3 that came to be associated with Dale:
It wouldn't be until the 1985 season that the Wrangler/Earnhardt/Childress car would carry a #3 resembling the one Richard had used during his driving career.
When Wrangler was replaced by Goodwrench for the 1988 season, the original Childress style #3 continued. There was even a small Wrangler ID on that car.
What goes around comes around.
And during the 1965 Southern 500 at Darlington, here's third running LeeRoy Yarbrough in the #3 Ray Fox 1965 Chevy getting caught up in the mess created when Cale Yarborough cleared the guardrail in Banjo Matthews' #27 Ford after colliding with the Betty Lilly #24 driven by Sam McQuagg as Darel Dieringer in the Bud Moore #16 Mercury takes evasive action. That Ray Fox red #3 on a white body remains my favorite #3.
