Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Childress wants to retire Dale Earnhardt’s ‘3’

Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2001 | 9:26 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. Reach him at bh@lasvegassun.com or 259-4089.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Winston Cup team owner Richard Childress is pushing NASCAR to retire the car number "3" that the late Dale Earnhardt made famous.

Although NASCAR never has retired a car number, Childress said Sunday he hoped the sanctioning body would make an exception in this case.

"The numbers belong to NASCAR and NASCAR controls the numbers," Childress said. "It's not their policy to retire numbers but we're talking to them heavily about retiring the number 3.

"Right now, we're just in conversations with NASCAR and hopefully by Atlanta (in mid-November) we'll be able to come up with an answer."

Childress said that since car owners own the numbers, he was confident that no other team would be able to run a No. 3 car in the Winston Cup Series as long as Childress is an owner.

Childress has had the number since 1973 and said he would not run a No. 3 car out of respect for the memory of Earnhardt.

"Unless something drastic comes up, NASCAR lets the owners retain the numbers they've got," he said. "In this situation here, they're having to make the right decision as well.

"Hopefully, that decision is that if they won't retire it, they would let us keep the No. 3 and not run it. The ideal scenario is that they will retire it."

One problem NASCAR faces with retiring a number is that every number from 1 to 99 is assigned and if they started retiring them, eventually they would be short of car numbers -- although only about 50 cars attempt to qualify for any given race.

Childress on Sunday announced that Kevin Harvick, who took over for Earnhardt after his death on the final lap of the Daytona 500 in February, would continue to run the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet. Childress changed the car's color from black to white and the number from 3 to 29 after Earnhardt's death. Next season, Harvick's car will sport a silver-and-black paint scheme.

Although many drivers praised the new facility, some were critical of the fact that it had only one racing lane -- or groove -- because there had been only three races held on the track since it opened earlier this year.

"I don't mean to brag, but Las Vegas did the thing correct," Busch said. "They had that track built in 1994 and the first Cup race was 1998.

"There was four years of races with trucks, Busch, IRL and all the different types of races that they had on the track (and) it was groomed and ready to go. That's why we saw five-wide racing the first time."

Actually, LVMS opened in 1996 and had two years' worth of racing before it held its first Winston Cup race, but Busch's point was well taken.

The earliest a Winston Cup championship was settled was in 1975 -- the first year of the current points system -- when Richard Petty clinched the title with four races remaining.

Since then, the championship has been settled only eight times before the final race. On four occasions, it was clinched with two races remaining and four other times with one race left.

The championship has been determined in the final race of the season 17 times. This year's season finale is Nov. 23 at New Hampshire International Speedway.