Behind The Number ~ History Of The No. 2 In NASCAR
2/10/2014
Jim Fitzgerald
When Brad Keselowski straps himself into the No. 2 Miller
Lite Ford in a few weeks at Daytona, it will be the beginning of his fourth
year in the seat of the “Blue Deuce.”
Roger Penske has been using the No. 2 for quite some time in NASCAR’s
most elite division, but “The Captain” was not the only one to use the No. 2 on
the sides of his cars. Let’s go back in
time and see who else has used the No. 2 in the Modern Era…
Dave Marcis was the first driver to use the No. 2 in
1972. He had actually been using it in
1971 as well, along with a host of other numbers. In 1972, however, it was mostly the No. 2 for
Marcis. He began the year with a blown
engine in the Daytona 500, but scored eight top-tens
throughout the season. As Marcis was
also the owner of the car, when an opportunity came along to drive for someone
else, Marcis did not let his equipment sit idle. He ran a few races in Roger Penske’s No. 16,
and when he did, drivers such as Ken Rush at Charlotte, Bill Seifert at
Michigan, Ray Hendrick at Martinsville and Roger McClusky
at the second Charlotte race could be seen in the No. 2.
In 1973, if there was a No. 2 on the track, Dave Marcis was
in it. He ran 23 races in the car that
year, had six top-tens and a high finish of 4th at
the spring Bristol race. The odd part
was the he and Roger Penske almost alternated weekly the ownership of the
car. 1974 saw Marcis running his own car
again for the better part of the season.
He did put Dick Trickle in the car for two races at the end of the
season, and mind you, this was fifteen years before Trickle even ran for the
Rookie of the Year title! Marcis ran
those two races for Nord Krauskopf in the No. 71, a
car number Marcis would use for the latter part of his career. There was no No. 2
in the final race that year at Ontario.
Marcis was piloting the No. 64 for future Cup Series pace car driver
Elmo Langley. Marcis took the No. 2 to
its best finishes of the season at Darlington and Martinsville, where he came
home in fourth place.
In 1975, it was a rare sight to see the No. 2 on the
track. Marcis was still in the No. 71,
but still used the deuce as a car owner for a few races. First, though, it was Richard White in a Mike
White owned ’72 Chevy. Then when Marcis
fielded his car, he put Ed Negre in the seat at Dover,
Charlotte, and the second Daytona event, where the No. 2 had its best finish of
the season, a 12th place. At the second
Pocono race, Dick May drove the No. 2 and John Martin finished out the season
at Ontario for Marcis in a ’74 Dodge.
In 1976, Roger Penske put Bobby Allison in his Matador,
adorned with the No. 2 on the sides and roof.
The team scored two poles, but no wins, although Allison did manage a
streak of 9 straight top-tens. Allison finished 4th in points, 547 back from
Champion Cale Yarborough. In ’77, Penske
and Marcis combined ownership of the No. 2 for fifteen starts, while the Mike
and Richard White combo used it again at Riverside in June. There were four fourth place finishes and
three other top-tens for the No. 2 when the season
was over. White managed a 22nd place in
his only effort.
When 1978 began, Marcis kept the number, but only as a
driver. Rod Osterlund had Marcis drive his car with his
familiar number, and they ran the full schedule together. The best finish of the season came in the
second Atlanta race. Marcis scored 24
top-ten finishes, and finished the season in 5th place in points, 506 behind
Cale Yarborough.
When the 1979 season started, the racing world found out
that Osterlund put a rookie in his car.
The kid’s name was Dale Earnhardt, and he found immediate success. He had accomplished a feat that no one else
had done in the Modern Era, and that was sending the No. 2 to Victory Lane,
winning at Bristol in just his seventh start of the season. Earnhardt continued to run well, but at
Pocono, he crashed hard and sustained an injury that would keep him out of the
car for a few weeks. The No. 2 still
ran, and Osterlund selected “The Silver Fox,” David Pearson to fill in. Before Earnhardt returned, Pearson had won
The Southern 500 at Darlington; a place where Earnhardt would do very well
himself throughout his career.
Earnhardt, even with missing those few races, still managed to finish
7th in points and win the Rookie of the Year title.
If you thought Earnhardt found success in ’79 with
Osterlund, 1980 was the dream season.
Earnhardt won five times scoring wins at Atlanta, Bristol, Nashville,
Martinsville, and Charlotte. Before
that, however, they opened the season with six consecutive top-five
finishes. It was that kind of
consistency which earned Earnhardt and the No. 2 team a Championship at the end
of the season by nineteen points over Yarborough. And if 1980 was the dream, 1981 was the
nightmare. There were no trips to the winner’s
circle for the No. 2 early in the season, and after the second race at
Michigan, Osterlund sold the team to Jim Stacy.
Earnhardt quit the team after Talladega a few races later to go drive
for Richard Childress in his No. 3. The
No. 2 seat was filled by Joe Ruttman, but when first
Darlington race rolled around the following year, Ruttman
was out, Tim Richmond was in the car, and he actually won twice at Riverside
that season.
In 1983, Stacy tapped a young Mark Martin to drive the No.
2. Despite scoring a third place finish
at Darlington in the spring, Martin was replaced by Morgan Shepherd, who didn’t
win and wound up finishing 20th in points.Stacy disappeared from the sport, and that left the No.2
available for the 1984 season. Car owner
Robert Harrington put Morgan Shepherd in the car at Richmond, and then Elliott
Forbes-Robinson drove it at both Talladega races, the
first Michigan race, and the fall races at Charlotte and Atlanta, while Rodney
Combs drove Harrington’s car at the second Michigan race.
In 1985, car owner Cliff Stuart put 1984 Rookie of the Year
Rusty Wallace in his No. 2 Alugard Pontiac. The results were not stellar, although they
did score eight top-ten finishes throughout the year. At the end of the year, after a 19th place
points finish, Wallace left the team to drive for Raymond Beadle’s Blue Max
team. The No. 2 was again a rare sight in 1986. Cliff Stuart put Kirk Bryant in his car for
the first four races of the season, and then it wasn’t seen again until Rick
Hendrick put Brett Bodine in his car for the Charlotte 600 with Exxon as the
sponsor. Robert Harrington used the No.
2 again this season, this time for five races with Rodney Combs. Combs finished 16th at
Charlotte in the fall for the best run of the No. 2 in the ’86 season.
It was a lonely single race in 1987 for the No. 2 when
Darrell Bryant put Kirk Bryant in the car at the second race at Rockingham in
October. The following year, D. K.
Ulrich used the No. 2 with driver Ernie Irvan.
Irvan finished second to Ken Bouchard for Rookie of the Year, which was
the highlight of the program. They hung
with it the next season and scored a high finish of sixth at the second
Martinsville race.
In 1990, D. K. Ulrich used a list of drivers for his No. 2,
which had to keep the car builders on their toes. Eddie Bierschwale
started the season in the Daytona 500.
Rick Mast then drove the No. 2 from Richmond until the first Dover race,
and scored a 12th place finish at Bristol as a high point. Jim Bown ran the
car at Sonoma, and then it was Troy Beebe who sat in the car for Pocono and
Michigan. When the series returned to
Daytona in July, Charlie Glotzbach was at the helm,
and then it would be Jerry O’Neil at Watkins Glen. Glotzbach would
return for the Southern 500, and then Ulrich himself would drive the No. 2 at
Richmond. Jim Sauter
drove the car in the second Dover race while Rick Jeffrey was in control at
Rockingham. Ted Musgrave took the seat
for the races at Phoenix and Atlanta.
Here ends the fluctuating history of the No. 2.
After winning the Winston Cup Championship in 1989, Rusty
Wallace left the No. 27 Blue Max Miller Genuine Draft team to join up with
Roger Penske. The team would be called
Penske Racing South, and Wallace would be a minority owner, holding 24 percent
of the team. They chose to use the No.
2, and in their first season together, Wallace scored wins at Bristol and
Pocono. In 1992, Wallace would win
again, but only once, and this time in the fall Richmond race.
In 1993, Wallace went on a tear and scored ten
victories. He started with the second
race of the season at The Rock, and then dominated the early short track season
by winning at Bristol, North Wilkesboro, and Martinsville. In the summer, he took wins at Loudon and
Richmond, then won Dover, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham again, and finished
it off with one more in the final race of the season at Atlanta. Wallace finished second to Dale Earnhardt in
the Championship standings by 80 points.
After the Atlanta race, Wallace and Earnhardt, fierce competitors, but
also good friends, shared a backwards victory lap. Earnhardt carried Alan Kulwicki’s flag, and
Wallace carried Davey Allison’s flag.
They were saluting their fallen fellow drivers who had perished earlier
in the season in separate aircraft crashes.
Wallace backed up his wins in ’93 with eight more in 1994. Rockingham, both Martinsville races, both
Dover races, Michigan, Pocono, and Bristol all donated trophies to Wallace’s
Hall of Fame career.
In 1995, there were two more wins. One came in the spring Martinsville race and
the second in the fall at Richmond.
Wallace found more success in 1996 at Martinsville again, along with
Sonoma, Michigan, Pocono, and Bristol.
The last quarter of the season, the No. 2 featured a different paint
scheme, celebrating Miller Brewing Company’s 25th Anniversary in the sport. 1997 saw the car go through a major redesign,
and it was now Miller Lite on the car, the brand which remains today. Wallace won at Richmond that year, followed
by one at Phoenix in 1998. There was
also only one win, at Bristol, in 1999, but in 2000, Wallace took the No. 2 to
victory in Bristol twice, as well as Pocono and Michigan. In 2001, Wallace was able to win only once at
California.
When 2002 was complete, Wallace had been unable to get the
No. 2 across the line first, and it ended his personal sixteen-year winning
streak. There were no wins in 2003,
either. In 2004, Wallace scored the
final win of his career, and to no one’s surprise, it was at Martinsville. At the end of 2005, Wallace called it a
career. Kurt Busch took over the No. 2
in 2006, and picked up right where Wallace left off, with a win at Bristol in
the spring and in 2007, he found wins in the second races at Michigan and
Pocono. Busch would drive the No. 2 for
three more years, scoring wins at Loudon, Texas, the Charlotte, 600 and twice at
Atlanta. After the final race f the 2010 season, Busch would move to the No. 22, which
was a renumbered No. 12 that Penske had been using. The No. 2 would have a new driver, and his
name was, and is, Brad Keselowski.
Keselowski scored three wins in his first year in the No. 2, at Kansas,
Pocono and Bristol. In 2012, Keselowski
pulled an Earnhardt. In his second year
in the No. 2, he won five races (Bristol, Talladega, Kentucky, Chicago, and
Dover) and also won the Championship, this one a first for Roger Penske.
Keselowski did not make the Chase for the Championship in
2013, so he was unable to repeat as Champion, but he did score a win at
Charlotte in the fall, his only win of the year. Now Keselowski finds himself still in the No.
2, and has to look forward to what the Blue Deuce will bring.
Bill Blair was the first driver in NASCAR to record a win in
the No. 2. This was in 1950 at Vernon
Fairgrounds in New York. Herb Thomas and
Bobby Allison also won in the No. 2 before the Modern Era began in 1972. Overall, there have been 76 wins in the No. 2
in NASCAR history, among nine different drivers. It is third on the list of all-time winning
car numbers behind the 11 with 203 and the 43 with 198. There have also been 434 top-five finishes
and 754 top-tens.
What does the future hold for the No. 2? We’ll find out, because Daytona and the 2014 season are right around the corner!
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