NASCAR teams pick car numbers, not drivers. Do they care?
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Alanis King, Racing columnist
In November, Kyle Busch reached a milestone he didn’t expect to hit until his NASCAR Cup Series retirement: his last race in the No. 18. It was the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, and the car he had become synonymous with — a yellow Toyota Camry sprinkled with M&M’s — would soon be gone for good. The weekend was full of tearful goodbyes, both to Busch’s teammates and to the athlete he’d been for 15 years.
The night before the race, Busch thought about the gravity of it all.
“I’m like, ‘Tomorrow’s the last time I’m in the M&M’s car. Tomorrow’s the last time I’m in the 18,'” Busch told ESPN. “I wanted to run the whole rest of my time in the 18, but the cards weren’t on the table.”
Unlike in so many other sports, NASCAR grants numbers to teams, not athletes. Busch drove for Joe Gibbs Racing from 2008 through 2022, becoming a two-time Cup champion and Toyota’s winningest NASCAR driver. He was the No. 18. But when M&M’s parent company, Mars Inc., decided to leave the sport after 2022, Busch had to look for new teams.
One of his first thoughts was: “What number am I going to be?”
“There are drivers who come up through the ranks who have numbers that are close to them,” Busch said. “But a lot of times, up at the top level, the NASCAR Cup Series, you just get in there with whatever the number is. When I joined Hendrick Motorsports, it was the 5 car. When I joined Joe Gibbs Racing, it was 18. Now, at [Richard Childress Racing, I’m] the 8.”
NASCAR’s system might seem counterintuitive, considering athletes build empires around names and numbers, but it allows teams to build empires instead, and the best teams outlast their drivers. Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte drove the Gibbs No. 18 before Busch, and Mark Martin, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Larson drove the Hendrick No. 5 after him.
That’s why Justin Marks, who founded Cup team Trackhouse Racing in 2020, chose numbers and built his empire around them.
“I wanted the numbers to be endemic to the team, because numbers don’t travel with the drivers,” Marks told ESPN. “Two of the most iconic numbers between 1 and 100, independent of what they’ve done in NASCAR, are the 1 and the 99.”
Both numbers had history in NASCAR. To rebrand them for Trackhouse and its drivers, Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez, Marks stylized them with a slash to match the team’s logo.
“It was important for us to do a brand element in the number itself,” Marks said. “In a lot of other forms of motorsport, the liveries on cars tend to be endemic to the teams. When the McLaren goes by in IndyCar and Formula One, you immediately know it’s a McLaren.
“In our sport, we’ve gotten to a place where there’s nothing sacred about these schemes as far as how they relate to the teams, because the entire race car is a sellable asset. So then, you look for opportunities to have some sort of continuity across all of the race cars and across the season. We can have a different sponsor every week, but it’s instantly identifiable as a Trackhouse car.”
Marks plans to keep the Nos. 1 and 99 forever, but he knows that can be tricky. When Busch left for Richard Childress Racing, the Gibbs team shelved the No. 18 — for now. His replacement, Ty Gibbs, took the No. 54 instead.
“When the 18 is on the track, it’s burned in everybody’s mind that it’s Kyle Busch,” Marks said. “If the number is so closely associated with the history of a single driver, sometimes it’s hard to start a new chapter. It would be more difficult to put Ty Gibbs in the 18 and start to tell the story of Ty Gibbs.
“If we win five championships with Ross Chastain, and he races for us until the age of 44 and retires, that’s a long time from now, but I imagine we’d have a discussion around whether we want to continue running the 1.”
Busch’s No. 8 has its own lore. It is famously associated with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who drove the No. 88 when he moved to Hendrick Motorsports.
“When Dale Jr. switched, all the fans who had the 8 tattooed on them were wondering what the hell they were going to do,” Busch said. “I actually had a couple fans ask me: ‘Hey, you’re not 18 anymore. You’re 8. What should we do with our tattoos?’ I told them: ‘You can put the [dates] underneath it, from 2008 to 2022, or take the 1 and make it the new Cup Series trophy. You could have the 8 next to it.'”
Busch doesn’t run his Cup number everywhere. In lower divisions, he runs the No. 51 — an ode to Rowdy Burns, a character in his favorite movie growing up, “Days of Thunder.” Busch’s son, Brexton, runs the No. 18B, and Busch has noticed other drivers’ children doing the same.
“Kyle [Larson] was always No. 1 when he grew up,” Busch said. “I don’t know why he was No. 1, but now that his kid’s racing, Owen, he’s 01. I think it’s like the ‘little one.’ But I think they also did it because his initials are ‘O,’ which is a zero, and ‘L,’ which is a one.”
“I was number 1K,” Larson told ESPN. “I didn’t pick that number. My dad did, and it just became my number. The original go-kart we bought was the 1. Rather than changing the number, we just threw a ‘K’ on it.”
Just like his dad, Larson picked Owen’s number.
“There are a few reasons,” Larson said. “My dad’s hero growing up was LeRoy Van Conett. He drove the 01 sprint car. My dad owned a dirt midget that he would run people at the Chili Bowl [Nationals] with, and it would be the 01. When I started owning my own midget for the Chili Bowl, somebody already had the 1K.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’ll just use the 01.’ I really liked it. I won both Chili Bowls that I ran as the 01, and not many people I know of have run an 01. So when Owen started racing, I was like: ‘We’ll make it 01.’ It kind of sounds like ‘Owen’ — ‘O-wen,’ ‘Oh-one.'”
Larson drives the No. 5 Cup car, just like Busch did almost two decades ago. When Larson joined Hendrick Motorsports, the team asked what number he wanted. He responded: “Whatever you want to give me.”
“I wouldn’t say, ever, do I feel like I own that number over anybody else who’s been the 5,” Larson said. “In dirt racing, you can share a number with somebody. You just have to have a letter separating it. In NASCAR, nobody can have the same number as you.
“So I think in NASCAR, for the time you’re in the car, that’s your number. Hopefully, you have a lot of success and people remember you. Like Kyle Busch, I think of him as 18. If he wins tons of races and more championships in the 8, it could sway what I remember him as.”
Larson has had a lot of numbers, including 1K, 01, 83V, 99 and 71. The Nos. 5 and 57 are special because he runs them now, and because 5/7 ended up being his daughter’s birthday. But he’ll run anything, often without a preference.
There’s just one exception.
“If I could hand select a number and be 1K in the Cup Series, I would love that,” Larson smiled. “That would be my number.”
Busch didn’t hand select the No. 8, but the more he wins in the car, the more it feels like his own, he said. It was also a bit of fate.
“My son’s birthday is 5/18,” Busch said. “The 5 and 18 were my first two Cup Series numbers, and it’s 51 and 8 now. It’s kind of ironic how things — and numbers — work out sometimes.”
SEWELL, N.J. — A few days after brothers John and Matthew Gaudreau died when they were struck by a driver while riding bicycles on the eve of their sister Katie’s wedding, family friends were visiting parents Guy and Jane at their home during a rainstorm. Looking outside after the skies cleared, they saw a double rainbow that brought them some momentary peace.
Since then, Jane Gaudreau had not gotten any signs she attributed to her sons, so she sat in their room Friday and asked them for some divine intervention to clear out bad weather in time for an event to honor their legacies. After a brief scare of a tornado watch the night before, a rainbow appeared Saturday morning about an hour before the sun came out for the inaugural Gaudreau Family 5K Walk/Run and Family Day.
“I was so relieved,” Jane said. “I was like, ‘Well, there’s my sign.'”
Thousands attended the event at Washington Lake Park in southern New Jersey, a place John and Matthew went hundreds of times as kids and around the corner from Hollydell Ice Arena, where they started playing hockey. Roughly 1,100 people took part in a walk or run in person, along with more than 1,300 virtually in the U.S., Canada and around the world.
“I think it speaks to them as a family, how close they were and how everybody loved being around them,” said Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk, one of a handful of NHL players who were close to the Gaudreaus and made a point to be there. “You just see the support from this community and from other players as well that are here and traveled in. It just says a lot about Johnny, Matty, their legacy and this family as a whole, how much support they have because they’re such amazing people.”
Along with honoring the NHL star known as “Johnny Hockey” and his younger brother who family and friends called Matty, the goal of the event was to raise money for an accessible playground at Archbishop Damiano School where Jane and her daughter Kristen work. It was a cause John and Matthew had begun to champion in honor of their grandmother Marie, who spent 44 years at the school and died in 2023.
It became their mother’s project after their deaths.
“Jane works every day with children with disabilities, and she knew how important it was for the playground to be built,” said family friend Deb Vasutoro, who came up with the idea for a 5K. “The playground has been a project for, I think, four or five years, and there just never was enough funding. When the boys passed and Jane needed a purpose, she thought, ‘Let’s build the playground.’ It was the perfect marriage of doing something good to honor the boys and seeing children laugh and smile.”
The Rev. Allain Caparas from Gloucester Catholic High School, which the brothers attended and played hockey for while growing up in Carneys Point, said raising funds for the playground is an extension of the impact they had on the community.
“They’re continuing to make a difference in the lives of so many others,” Caparas said. “Johnny and Matthew lived their lives with purpose, and now we’re celebrating that.”
Social media filled with mentions from folks in Columbus and Calgary, the NHL cities in which John Gaudreau played, and as far away as Ireland and Sweden. Paul O’Connor, who has been tight with the Gaudreau family from son Dalton being childhood best friends with Matthew, couldn’t empty out his inbox because he kept getting notifications about signups and donations.
“It just keeps growing,” O’Connor said. “And people that couldn’t be here, they’re doing a virtual [5K]. If they can’t do either, they’re just throwing money at the cause.”
Tears welled up in the eyes of Guy and Jane as they talked about the event. His speech to the crowd was brief and poignant at the same time.
“I’d like to thank everybody for coming,” Guy said after running the 5K. “It really means a lot to Jane and the girls and the family. We miss the boys, and it really means a lot for us to have you here to honor my boys. Thank you.”
The sea of people first in the rain and then the sunshine included folks in gear from all across hockey. Tkachuk wore a “Johnny Hockey” hoodie with Gaudreau’s name and No. 13 on the back.
He handed sticks, collected from various vigils in late August and early September, to race winners along with fellow players Erik Gudbranson, Zach Aston-Reese, Tony DeAngelo and Buddy Robinson.
“Our family wouldn’t have missed this,” Gudbranson said after flying in Friday night following a trip to Walt Disney World. “Hockey’s a very tight community. It’s still a tragedy. We miss the boys.”
The aim is to hold the event annually moving forward, potentially in Calgary and Columbus.
“We thought this was such a good thing to honor the boys we want to keep it up,” Jane said. “I just think each year it’ll just get better and better.”
Florida Panthers forwards Eetu Luostarinen and Anton Lundell will be ready for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday night in Edmonton, coach Paul Maurice said Saturday.
Both players were injured in Wednesday’s series-clinching Game 5 win against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Panthers forward A.J. Greer‘s status for the series opener against the Oilers remains uncertain. He missed Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals and was on the ice for only 4:22 in Game 5 due to a lower-body injury.
All three players did not participate in Saturday’s practice, the first team skate since the defending champions booked their spot in the Final rematch.
“I think the only question mark is Greer,” Maurice said. “We will list him as day to day. The other guys are fine. They will be back on the ice tomorrow when we do a little bit of an optional.”
Luostarinen, 26, recorded 24 points (9 goals, 15 assists) in 80 games during the regular season and 13 points (4 goals, 9 assists) in 17 games this postseason.
Lundell, 23, tallied 45 points (17 goals, 28 assists) in 79 games in the regular season and 12 points (5 goals, 7 assists) in 17 playoff games.
Greer, 28, posted 17 points (6 goals, 11 assists) in 81 games in the regular season and three points (2 goals, 1 assist) in 12 playoff contests.
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