Are You Ready For A No. 3 Chevy On The Track Again?

Austin Dillon drove the black No. 3 Chevy truck in the Camping World Truck Series.  He also won the championship in that black No. 3.  Which is a fine way to represent that number, whose history touches many a heart.

And in 2012, Richard Childriss is putting Austin Dillon on the track in the NASCAR Nationwide Series.  And yes, it will be in the mostly black No. 3 Chevy Impala.

To be honest, being a die-hard Dale Earnhardt sr. fan, this progression for a No. 3 creeping ever so slowly towards the Cup series, seems to be coming at just the right time and at just the right pace.

Plus Austin Dillon has a lot of adjustments to tackle.  He's not seen some of the tracks he'll be seeing now in the Nationwide Series.  He hasn't dealt with road courses.

Childress has Max Papis coaching Dillon on the curvy race surfaces, so he might be OK there, but he's also looking to tackle tracks like California's 2-mile D-oval.

In the truck series, he took one year and learned what he needed to, and in the subsequent year, well, he won the Truck title.

Childress think that Austin Dillon will be tackling the Cup Series in 2013.  To be honest, from Dillon's track record (no pun intended), he might want to stay in the NNS for 2 years before tackling the big HP in the Cup side, but that's just me.  I could be wrong and he could be a monster in the Cup series.

Maybe I'm not quite ready to see a No. 3 in the Sprint Cup Series.  The day the that the No. 3 does show up for the Cup series will be a day of mixed emotions.  It will be a victory of sorts, that the number is back on the track.  But it will also trigger deep-seeded, saddened memories of a golden era of racing, when a living legend was still giving them hell.

God, I miss him in the sport.

But the number is Richard Childress's to run.  And it would seem he's respected the number long enough and has not only pulled it into the racing realm once again, but he's also done it with his grandson.