As seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson completed his final laps this year as a full-time driver, the topic of retired car numbers from NASCAR resurfaced.
There are 110 single- and double-digit car numbers available at the Cup level (0-99 and 00-09), and even if there are only 40 cars in a race, NASCAR doesn’t want to start dropping a lot of numbers, only to run out of numbers later. So no one has the honor.
(The No. 61 used by the late Richie Evans, who was inducted in 2011 into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, has been unofficially retired from the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.)
But the subject of number retirement is more complicated than just the number of numbers available. It would appear that Johnson’s 48 would be on the short list of numbers that would be considered for retirement, along with Richard Petty’s No. 43 and Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s No. 3. But where would the cutoff line be?
Removing those three numbers and adding the number 24 used by four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon would leave 106 numbers, which is still a lot to do. But car owners don’t even want to retire their own numbers, because champion drivers have established tremendous marketing value for the numbers.
The 48, 43 and 3 are in fonts evocative of the three seven-time champions. And T-shirts, die-cast replicas and other merchandise are still selling. Go to a NASCAR event and count every 3 you see one day.
Hendrick Motorsports, the owner of Johnson’s Chevrolet, plans to award Johnson’s No. 48 car to his successor, who has not been named. Gordon last drove the No. 24 in 2015, and Chase Elliott picked it up for his rookie Cup season the following year.
William Byron now drives HMS car #24, and he has gathered many fans who cheered for Gordon (and, to a lesser extent, Elliott, who is now in car #9). Byron’s car is different from Gordon’s, but the heritage of the number is preserved and it has a powerful effect.
When Petty retired as driver after the 1992 season, Petty Enterprises did not run a No. 43 car in 1993. The team moved STP sponsorship to the No. 44 car and hired Rick Wilson, who then failed to win a race and finished in the top 10 in only one of 29 races.
But Bill France Jr., the late son of NASCAR founder Big Bill France (and not technically a “Jr.”), didn’t want to permanently retire his numbers. “NASCAR would not let the 43 be retired,” Kyle Petty, Richard’s son, wrote to me in a Twitter message last week. “So my father decided to continue running it.”
So Petty’s 43 was back in 1994 with a new driver, Wally Dallenbach Jr. He finished in the top 10 three times but failed to qualify for six of 20 races before being fired. Petty Enterprises won only three Cup races before merging with Evernham Motorsports in 2009, and five races after that.
Dale Earnhardt’s famous No. 3 was parked in Cup competition from the time he was killed on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 until Austin Dillon, the grandson of team owner Richard Childress , be hired full-time in 2014. Number 3 has been removed. good was never part of the plan.
In 2014, Childress said during a preseason media tour: “The decision to use him was made 14 years ago when Dale Earnhardt and I were talking about what he was going to do in retirement and what the way he was going to help me with the No. 3 and the team, to put a driver in the car capable of winning races and championships. There were no plans to put anyone in the car until the right driver arrived. If Dale Jr. or another Earnhardt wanted to use it, that would be OK, but it had to be an Earnhardt or my family members in car 3.”
Dillon had used the No. 3 car as a tribute to Earnhardt as he rose through the ranks of stock car racing, and fans were excited to see the No. 3 car fly, even though it was at the lower levels of the sport and was not conducted in the air. The Intimidator. Childress asked the Earnhardt family if Dillon could use the No. 3 in Cup. They said yes.
So Dillon has been in the car with the No. 3 tilted, winning the Coca-Cola 600 in 2017 and the Daytona 500 in 2018. NASCAR has the numbers, and teams have to request them, after which teams do the artwork. and the design of the number their intellectual property, thus establishing a legacy. NASCAR is OK with that.
Numbers not used by a team – numbers 5 and 25 for HMS as examples – may be assigned by NASCAR to another team upon request. But the new team is not allowed to use number styles that resemble those that were protected by the old team.
So even after the breaks for both, there is still a white #43 with a rear shadow on a Cup car, 28 years after Petty, and a white, menacing #3 leaning on another Cup car, 19 years after Earnhardt. And next year there will probably be a 48 car with a right-leaning “48” that looks like Johnson’s old number.
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