Diecast Diaries
26 Jan 2019
Earnhardt Jr’s first full season in the #8 was in 2000 – Action ARC 1:24 – Credit: Dominik Wilde
‘Diecast Diaries’ is a new feature where I will be taking diecast cars from my personal collection and telling their real-world stories.
This week’s instalment looks at the #8 in NASCAR, which will make a full-time return in the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity championships this season. The number has a long history in NASCAR, but in more recent times it is mostly associated with Dale Earnhardt Jr. ‘Junior’ made his Cup series debut with the number in 1999, before running it full-time between 2000-2007. In that time the #8 decal resembled the famous #3 ran by Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Earnhardt Jr. took 17 of his 26 career wins with the number, and had his most successful seasons with it in 2003 (pictured below) and 2004 where he took two wins on the way to third in points and six wins (including a first Daytona 500 victory) and fifth in the points respectively.
Earhardt Jr. had his strongest Cup season in the #8 in 2003 – Action ARC 1:24 – Credit: Dominik Wilde
Sadly following this strong run, Earnhardt Jr’s form tapered off, with him claiming just two more wins over the next three seasons. Fifth place in the 2006 NASCAR Cup season offered a glimmer of hope, but following a tough 2007 campaign which came with no wins and off-track disagreements with step-mother and Dale Earnhardt Incorporated team boss Teresa Earnhardt, Earnhardt Jr. jumped ship to Hendrick Motorsports.
At the time Earnhardt Jr. was reportedly keen to take the #8 with him to his new team, but was not allowed to. Instead, he opted for the #88, while the #8 lived on at DEI for another season and a half.
In 2008 the car entered with a fresh look. Gone was the iconic Budweiser colours that had become synonymous with the car over the past nine seasons, and in came sponsorship from the US Army, which had backed DEI’s #01 car previously. Driving was shared between future Hall of Famer Mark Martin and rookie driver Aric Almirola. Again the wins proved elusive for the entry, with Martin’s third place in the first Richmond race being the team’s best result all season.
Earhardt Jr. won the 2004 Daytona 500 with this special ‘Born on Date’ paint scheme – Action ARC 1:24 – Credit: Dominik Wilde
Martin too left DEI for Hendrick at the end of 2008, while the US Army took its sponsorship dollars to the newly-formed Stewart-Haas team for 2009. Almirola was retained, but as sponsorship was on a race-by-race basis, his season was far from secure. Surely enough, the money dried up by just the seventh round of the 36-race season, leaving the NASCAR Cup series without a #8 car for the first time since 1982.
That all changed last year when Richard Childress Racing – the team which Dale Earnhardt Sr. raced for in six of his seven championship-winning campaigns – brought back the number for Daniel Hemric’s Cup debut.
Hemric, backed by Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff, only competed in two races in 2018, taking a best finish of 23rd at the Charlotte Roval. His primary focus for the year was in the Xfinity series, where he ultimately finished third in the points (driving the #21 car). The strong run didn’t result in any wins, but 16 top-five finishes – including four-in-a-row in the first half of the year – proved more than enough to gain graduation to the Cup series for 2019.
Earnhardt Jr. last drove the #8 in 2007, the year the Car of Tomorrow was introduced – Action ARC 1:24 – Credit: Dominik Wilde
This year Hemric will once again race with the #8 in the Cup series, marking the first time that it has run full-time in NASCAR’s premier division since Martin and Almirola’s shared season over a decade ago.
All-in-all, 93 drivers have raced with the #8 in NASCAR’s premier series, with Earnhardt Jr. racing the number a record 291 times – nine more than Ed Negre. Of the number’s 38 Cup series race wins, Joe Weatherly has 20 of those, three more than Earnhardt Jr. The only other win for the number came at Talladega in 1986 when Bob Hillin Jr. took his only career win.
Mark Martin (pictured) and Aric Almirola shared the #8 in 2008 – Action ARC 1:64 – Credit: Dominik Wilde
The number will once again have a connection to Earnhardt Jr. in 2019 as well. His JR Motorsports team has announced that its #9 team, which won the 2018 Xfinity championship with Tyler Reddick, will be rebranded as the #8. While Earnhardt Jr’s two Xfinity championships in his driving career came behind the wheel of the #3, he did have plenty of success in the #8 in NASCAR’s second-tier competition.
After missing the 2000 season as he made his Cup debut, Earnhardt Jr. ran the car (as well as the #3, #5, #7, #81, #83, and #88) on a part-time basis between 2001-2018. In 2003 he entered just three Xfinity races, all in the #8, and he won every one of those starts.
Daniel Hemric brought the #8 back to the Cup in 2018 – Action ARC 1:24 – Credit: Dominik Wilde
Diecast Diaries is a regular series where I tell the real-world stories of the cars in my personal collection of diecast racing cars.
