Auto Racing
In NASCAR, only once has a number been officially retired; that is in the Whelen Modified Tour, where number 61 is retired for Richie Evans after his death in 1985. NASCAR unofficially retired the number 3 in honor of the late Dale Earnhardt, Sr. after his death on the track at the 2001 Daytona 500. Earnhardt's old team changed to the number 29, and the replacement driver (Kevin Harvick) has driven the 29 car ever since. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. made two special appearances in a number 3 car in the Busch Series in 2002 and again in the renamed Nationwide Series on July 2, 2010 at Daytona, but otherwise the number 3 was absent from all three national touring series until 2009, when Austin Dillon drove a number 3 in the Camping World Truck Series. Dillon is the grandson of Earnhardt's longtime friend and car owner Richard Childress, and he drives for Richard Childress Racing; after winning the Truck Series title in 2011, he now drives the #3 car in the Nationwide Series. Ty Dillon, Austin's brother (another grandson of Childress), now runs the number 3 in the Camping World Truck Series. It is expected that Austin will return the number 3 to the Sprint Cup Series for the first time since Earnhardt's death when he begins competing in that series full-time in the 2014 season.
CART retired the use of #99 after the fatal accident of Greg Moore in 1999. However, since the IndyCar Series unification took place in 2008, that recognition has since been abandoned.
Read more about this topic: Retired Number
Famous quotes containing the word racing:
“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)