Richard Childress recalls influence of Dale Earnhardt on RCR

Richard Childress knows Dale Earnhardt made a huge impact on Richard Childress Racing (RCR) during the 1980s and 1990s. On Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Childress spoke to Kevin Harvick about the influence Earnhardt had on the team.

“Dale and I were on a mountain, and his horse flipped over backwards,” Childress told Harvick. “I went off the mountain, busted my nose, got back to camp and I busted my chest up. He grabs me and says, ‘Why’d you pull my horse off the mountain?’ You know Dale.

“That night at the campfire, we were talking. I said, ‘Dale, if anything happens to me, you got to go in and race the next week. You’d have had to went on in Phoenix and race.’ He said ‘Well, if it ever happens to me, you got to do that.’ I thought about that. I was going to quit until I thought about that. So I knew we had to do it to keep things going for your company. You were the right person at the right time.

Earnhardt died on Feb. 18, 2001, during the Daytona 500. It led to Harvick taking over, and he won two races and finished ninth in the standings that year. Harvick drove for RCR until the end of the 2013 season.

Richard Childress shares more on Dale Earnhardt’s impact

“I ain’t saying this because you’re sitting here. I’ve said it before that I don’t know of another driver that could’ve gotten in that car under the circumstance, and the pressure of driving that car that Dale Earnhardt got,” Childress said. “But the thing I remember is how much we all pulled together.”

RCR had a a lot of success with Earnhardt as he won six NASCAR Cup Series championships. The team also won the Daytona 500 three times with Earnhardt (1998), Harvick (2007) and Austin Dillon (2018).

While RCR has had a lot of success over the years, 2024 is a season Childress and the team would like to forget. “It’s been a tough year, but everybody has fought hard. We see that we’ve got to make some changes and we got more changes coming [that] you’re going to be hearing about in the next month probably. And we’re excited about next year,” Childress stated in October, per Sports Illustrated. “You know, you can’t dwell on the past, you have to learn from the past. You know, history teaches you. And that’s what we’ve got to learn from is what happened this year and take it into next year with a positive attitude that we’re not going to do it.”