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Richard Childress to drive car Dale Earnhardt won last race in at ‘Dega

Richard Childress will once again climb behind the wheel of a race car – but it won’t be just any race car and it won’t be at just any race track.

Childress announced Wednesday that he will pace the field prior to the start of the Oct. 13 Cup playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway, driving one of the most renowned cars in the sport: the same No. 3 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet Monte Carlo that the late Dale Earnhardt drove to the 76th and final win of his Cup career nearly 19 years earlier in the Winston 500 at Talladega on Oct. 15, 2000.

Earnhardt win at Talladega 2000

Earnhardt’s roar to the checkered flag is one of the more memorable moments in NASCAR history, going from 18th to first place in the final four laps, beating Kenny Wallace to the finish line by .119 of a second for a Talladega track record 10th career Cup win.

“Dale is a part of the history of this place,” Childress said. “He loved Talladega because it was so wide, you could move around, and I’ve seen him do things here with a race car that you don’t even think about ... fitting in some of the holes. And if there wasn’t room, he would kind of make a hole.”

Talladega president Grant Lynch initially reached out to Childress, who this year is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Richard Childress Racing, to want to do something special to commemorate the special day.

“Grant Lynch called me and says, ‘What do you think about bringing Dale’s car down here that he won the race with in 2000?’” Childress said during a press conference at the track. “I said, ‘I don’t know.’ But how do you say no to your best friend on something like this. So I said, ‘alright, I’ll do it.’

“We’re going to be running that car leading the field, which is going to be a great honor. That car hasn’t been out of our museum since we opened the doors of it, so this will be the first time we took it down, put it on the shop floor, got it all fixed, got the engine running – same engine that he had in the car that day. It’s the exact car just like the day when it left the winner’s circle here. … That’s going to be the coolest thing. It gives me cold chills just thinking about it.”

Childress then joked, “I asked my guys could I run it 200 mph.”

Talladega was where Childress made his first career Cup start as a race car driver on Sept. 14, 1969. He finished 23rd in a 36-driver field. He would go on to make 285 career starts between 1969 and 1981, collecting zero wins, six top-five and 76 top-10 finishes.

Lynch surprised Childress with the old CRC Chemicals helmet that Childress used to wear during his own racing days before becoming solely a full-time team owner.

Follow @JerryBonkowski