Gonna be weird seeing that #88 car back out there. Of course the 88 has a long history in the NASCAR Cup Series. In fact, Dale Jarrett in the #88 Quality Care Ford was my favorite driver when I first started watching NASCAR (and of course the #88 UPS car is still an iconic paint scheme). The first start for the #88 was way back in 1949 with driver Pepper Cunningham (yes I had to look that up), and over the years it's been driven by NASCAR legends like Ralph Earnhardt (father, of course, of Dale Earnhardt), Buddy Baker, Fireball Roberts, Bobby & Donnie Allison, Darrell Waltrip, and more. Most recently though, the number has been synonymous with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Junior began driving the #88 car in 2008 when he left Dale Earnhardt Inc. to join Hendrick Motorsports - and his stepmother Teresa wouldn't let him take his number 8 with him. The #88 wasn't Junior's first choice: He wanted to drive the #51, but eventually decided that he should keep an 8 in his number, and originally wanted to go with the iconic #28, which had been used by Robert Yates Racing in the past for their iconic Texaco paint scheme:
"I just started thinking about our fans that love this 8 and had all this 8 stuff and I'm like, 'Man we gotta go with something with an 8.' And that was everybody else's opinion too. So I was thinking 28. 28's it. I wanted 28. We're gonna get 28. We're gonna be 28. Nobody's 28. Let's be 28. And they were like, 'Well we gotta ask Yates.' I'm like, 'We do? Why? I don't need to ask nobody.' So we called Yates up, Robert, and they actually talked to Texaco. And Texaco said hard no. Now I don't think they had rights to this number in this series. They're not even a sponsor anymore. But something about the history and heritage and legacy of that number was important to them. And Yates was like, 'Man please don't do this.'" Well with Dale Jarrett moved on and the #88 no longer in use, Yates offered Junior that number instead, and the rest is history. Junior drove the #88 for Hendrick from 2008 until his retirement in 2017, winning 8 races with the number, including the 2014 Daytona 500. And when he retired, Hendrick kept the 88 car for a few years with Junior's replacement, Alex Bowman. But in 2021, Bowman moved to the #48 to replace Jimmy Johnson and Kyle Larson became the 4th Hendrick car running the #5 - leaving the #88 on the shelf. It hasn't been run in the Cup Series since 2020, but that's going to change next year. Trackhouse Racing announced today that Shane Van Gisbergen will be moving to the Cup Series full time next year, and he'll be running - you guessed it - the #88. https://twitter.com/TeamTrackhouse/status/1827449719116718170 Van Gisbergen is originally from New Zealand, and won three Australian Supercars championships before deciding to try his hand at NASCAR. He shocked the sport when he won in his first ever Cup Series start at the Chicago street course last year, and this year he's been racing full time in the Xfinity Series while making select starts in Cup. He's already won three races in the lower series so far this year, so it was expected that he would be moving to a third Trackhouse car next year, joining teammates Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez. But pretty much everybody expected him to run the #97 car, which was his number in Supercars and the number he's been running in the Xfinity Series. After the announcement was made that Trackhouse would instead be reviving the #88, Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans weren't exactly sure how to feel about it: https://twitter.com/csuhpat1/status/1827457911360282935
https://twitter.com/RFlores91/status/1827461198046228899 Of course, Dale Jr. has already said that he gave his blessing for SVG to use the number, and that he's excited to see the #88 out on the track once again: https://twitter.com/DaleJr/status/1827450946042917296 And it seems like NASCAR fans are overwhelmingly in support of having the Kiwi in the Cup Series full time (and as a fan of Trackhouse Racing myself, I can tell you I've been hoping for this announcement all year). Gonna take some getting used to seeing that #88 back out on the track, but I have a feeling SVG is one who will be able to get it back into Victory Lane where it belongs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp4vDpMX1Kk
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