Ownership of Richard Childress Racing
He retired from driving in 1981 after Rod Osterlund sold his NASCAR team to J.D. Stacy, and Osterlund's driver, Dale Earnhardt, did not want to drive for Stacy. Childress, with recommendations from R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, chose to retire and put Earnhardt behind the wheel of his #3 car, complete with Wrangler Jeans sponsorship.
That first alliance lasted for the season. Ricky Rudd was hired in 1982 and drove for two years, giving Childress his first career victory in June 1983 at Riverside. Earnhardt returned for the 1984 season, and together with Childress formed one of the most potent combinations in NASCAR history. They won championships in 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993, and 1994.
In the mid-1990s, Childress began expanding his racing empire, fielding entries in the Busch Series and Craftsman Truck Series. The team won the 1995 Craftsman Truck Series championship with driver Mike Skinner in the series' first season. He also expanded to a two-car operation in what is now known as the Sprint Cup, with driver Skinner driving the #31. In the first part of the 2000s, he expanded to three cars, with the #30 car driven by Jeff Green.
Earnhardt was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Childress promoted Busch driver Kevin Harvick to drive the renumbered #29. Harvick would win in only his third start, at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
With Harvick having won the Busch Series championship in 2001 and 2006, RCR became the first team in NASCAR history to win all three of NASCAR's national championship series. RCR also won the Busch Series owners championships in 2003 with Kevin Harvick and Johnny Sauter and in 2007 with Scott Wimmer and Jeff Burton.
Most recently, RCR won the 2011 Camping World Truck Series Championship with Childress' grandson Austin Dillon driving the #3.
Read more about this topic: Richard Childress
Famous quotes containing the words ownership of, ownership, richard and/or racing:
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
—Larry Forrester, U.S. screenwriter, Hideo Oguni, and Ryuzo Kikushima. Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda, Kinji Fukasaku. Admiral Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)