Thursday, January 30, 2020

Terry Labonte was the winningest driver in the 5 car

When I first got into racing in the 1980s, Geoff Bodine was driving for, I think, Rick Hendrick.

Geoff wound up driving other numbers later in his career, so other guys got their shot in the 5. Terry Labonte won 12 races driving the 5, and he picked up the second of his two Cup championships in the 5 in 1996.

Kasey Kahne later drove the 5 for Hendrick.

Drivers have started 1,568 races and won 45 of them driving the 5. Hendrick drivers have posted 38 wins in the 5; sadly, the 5 hasn't been in use in Cup since 2017.

Bonus trivia: Kellogg's famously sponsored the No. 5 Hendrick team from 1994-2004, and those cars carried some of the most notable paint schemes in series history.

 Related posts
The 1 was not a lonely number in Cup racing
The 2 has been a winning car Number in NASCAR
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Thursday, January 23, 2020

The 4 was a good number in the Daytona 500

The No. 4 isn't the biggest winner among the car numbers, but drivers have posted 71 Cup victories (including three in the Daytona 500) with the number.

 Hall-of-fame driver Rex White picked up 26 of his 28 career Cup wins in the 4. Kevin Harvick has 26 Cup victories in the 4 and 23 in the 29.

 Morgan-McClure Motorsports won lots of races with the 4 in the 1990s, including one Daytona 500 win for Ernie Irvan and two more for Sterling Marlin. John Sears was another notable 4 driver.

 Al Keller's No. 4 Jaguar won in 1954 on the Linden (N.J.) Airport road cours e, giving the number its first win.
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Thursday, January 16, 2020

Earnhardt made the 3 an intimidating number

Dale Earnhardt made the 3 car famous among NASCAR fans. Half the fans hated Earnhardt; the other half loved him.
DALE EARNHARDT SR.

Few NASCAR car numbers are as famous as the 3, although the 43 (Richard Petty), 24 (Jeff Gordon) and 48 (Jimmie Johnson) are probably right there. Dale posted 67 of his 76 career wins in the 3; that's most of the 99 wins collected by a 3 car. He won six of his seven total titles in the 3.

 More about the 3: Dick Rathman grabbed the 3's first won on March 28, 1954 at Oakland (Calif.) Stadium. Other notable 3 drivers included Junior Johnson (nine wins in the 3), Richard Childress and Paul Goldsmith. Childress had his own team before Johnson reportedly suggested RC hire Earnhardt.

 Austin Dillon, Childress's grandson, currently drives the No. 3 on the NASCAR tour.

 (Above left) I wrote I Remember Dale Earnhardt in 2001, and Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr. came out in 2008.
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Tuesday, January 14, 2020

The 2 has been a winning car number in NASCAR

When I first started covering NASCAR regularly in 1990, the 2 wasn't a prominent number on the NASCAR circuit. But that changed when Rusty Wallace went to Roger Penske's No. 2 team in the early '90s.

 On the media tour one year (I'm not sure which year exactly) Rusty told us that his team's pit crew was going to set series records for pit times. I'm not sure we believed him, but he was right. And he won big.

 Overall, Rusty ran in 522 races and won 37 of them in the 2 car and posted 145 top-5 finishes and 252 top-10s. He never won a NASCAR championship in the 2, but he did just about everything else.

 Brad Keselowski is the second most successful driver in the 2, running 324 races and posting 29 wins, 114 top-5s and 180 top-10s. He won the 2012 NASCAR championship driving Penske's 2 car.

 Other prominent drivers have won in the 2, including Kurt Busch (8 wins), Bobby Allison (7 wins), Dale Earnhardt (6 wins overall and a championship in 1980),  Bill Blair (3 wins) and Tim Richmond (2 wins). Jim Paschal and all-time greats David Pearson and Herb Thomas each scored one win in the 2.

 But Rusty was No. 1 when it came to the 2.

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