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Richard Childress sat down with Kevin Harvick and talked about the influence of Dale Earnhardt Sr. within the team. He recalled the night when he and Earnhardt Sr. agreed to keep racing for the team in case something happened to the other.
Childress is the owner of Richard Childress Racing, a Lexington-based team founded in 1969. Earning more than 200 victories and 16 championships, the team currently fields two NASCAR Cup Series drivers, namely Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon. It also has two Xfinity seats filled by Austin Hill and Jesse Love.
In an episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Richard Childress shared telling Dale Earnhardt Sr. during a mountain hunting trip to continue racing if anything happened to him.
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“That night at the campfire, we were talking, I told him, I said, ‘Dale, if anything ever happens to me, you know you got to go in and race the next week. You’d have had to win on in Phoenix and race.'” [7:40]
In response, Earnhardt Sr. told him the same thing.
“And he said, ‘Well, if it ever happens to me, you got to do that.'”
Childress stated he thought about what Earnhardt Sr. told him when he considered quitting during a tough season in 2001. The seven-time Cup Series champion died that year on a last-lap crash at Daytona 500. He was trailing his son Dale Earnhardt Jr. in P3 when the accident happened.
The RCR owner spoke about how the following races encouraged him to keep the team running. One of which was Kevin Harvick’s win at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Harvick took over The Intimidator’s car and won his second race with the team in a photo finish with Jeff Gordon.
The race at the Pepsi 400 from Daytona International Speedway in 2001 also helped heal the team. For the uninitiated, the race was won by his son in the No. 8 Chevrolet his father owned.
Today, RCR competes in the stock car racing league as the second-oldest team behind Wood Brothers Racing.
Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch extended his winless streak at Kansas
Following the first race of the Round of 12 at Kansas Speedway, Kyle Busch's winless streak extended to 51 races. The Richard Childress Racing driver lost the lead with 32 laps to go after getting loose behind the dirty air from Chase Briscoe and spinning down to the apron.
Busch finished 19th at the Hollywood Casino 400 after leading for 26 laps.
The Kansas stop wasn’t the only race the 39-year-old veteran got close to ending his winless drought. The last two races of the Cup Series regular season saw him having back-to-back close finishes in P2. The first was behind Harrison Burton at Daytona, followed by Chase Briscoe at Darlington.
If Kyle Busch fails to secure a win this year, he will finish a season winless for the first time in two decades. The RCR driver still has six races left this season to try and park his No. 8 Chevy in victory lane and extend his streak.
