How Dale Jr. got No. 88

DALLAS – So we now have a pretty good idea of how this whole Dale Earnhardt Jr. deal with Hendrick Motorsports and his new car number and sponsors went down.

Based on the conversations and interviews done at Wednesday’s news conference at the Dallas Convention Center, the leading number in the clubhouse was, for quite a while, the 81.

Somewhere along the way, though, as trademarks and things like that were being researched, it was discovered that there’s an apparel company called Company 81 that sells a lot of the same kind of shirts and things you’d sell to race fans with a car number on it.

Hendrick Motorsports could have trademarked a particular design of an 81, but there’s nothing that could have been done to stop that company from putting out its own shirts with that number on it. That would have caused a type of confusion in the marketplace nobody wants any part of.

(There also was the fact that "81" is a number sometimes associated with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle group. Supposedly, members of that group sometimes have that number tattooed on them because the "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet and the "A" is the first, so "81" also can stand for "HA." Team owner Rick Hendrick, though, said that wasn’t a factor in the decision to move away from the 81.)

Earnhardt Jr. and Hendrick and everyone involved wanted a number with an "8" in it. They never thought much about the 88, figuring that number is already taken by Robert Yates Racing.

But since the number 28 isn’t being used right now, and since Earnhardt Jr. is keen on the sport’s history, that was the next target.

Kelley Earnhardt Elledge called Yates to ask about the 28 or, if Yates wanted to bring back the 28, maybe getting the 38. Yates said the 28 meant so much to him, because it was Davey Allison’s number and the number Yates started his team with, he’d rather keep that and bring it back himself. (That means you can figure the two cars Doug Yates will own next year will probably be the 28 and the 38.)

Robert Yates suggested the idea of giving the 88 to Earnhardt Jr.
That was fine with Earnhardt Jr. and Elledge and Hendrick. The number has a legacy in the sport, with 65 victories. Dale Jarrett is a driver Earnhardt Jr. respects, and he had the most recent success with it. Darrell Waltrip also won 25 races in that number, and DW also won championships driving in the Mountain Dew sponsored car.
So that all worked out nicely.

"Robert said ‘two eights are better than one,’" Elledge said.
To try to keep reporters guessing, Hendrick said the team put in trademark applications for several numbers it had no intention of using. He also said there were decals of other car numbers, figuring that information would get out and lead people to jump to conclusions. Some did.

Earnhardt Jr. said he had fun "playing the game" with reporters about the number and sponsor all summer. Hendrick was laughing, too, about the efforts to throw reporters off the scent.

But the whole thing just drove Elledge about half crazy, she said.

"I wish people could have just waited until we had it all to show everybody," she said. "There were times when I felt like I was in the middle of a big gossip ring."

Of course, if nobody cared enough to keep asking the questions, then Wednesday’s press conference wouldn’t have been carried live on several cable channels, including a home shopping channel. And a plane load of media from Charlotte wouldn’t have traveled halfway across country to see two paint jobs, either.