Qualla: Richard Childress Racing Museum

Richard Childress Racing Museum: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is one number in NASCAR that you do not have to explain. Three. Block letters, white outline, black quarter panel. The car that won the 1998 Daytona 500 in its twentieth attempt sits inside a former engine workshop in Welcome, North Carolina, and most of the other cars around it are versions of the same car, because Dale Earnhardt drove a lot of laps for Richard Childress and Richard Childress kept them. The Richard Childress Racing Museum opened in May 2003. It contains the largest collection of Earnhardt's black GM Goodwrench Chevrolets anywhere in the world.

Image: Michael Barera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Childress Racing Museum: The Building Was the Team

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0. The galleries are not retrofitted exhibition halls. They were the engine workshop, the fabrication room, and the research and development bay where the cars were actually built. Richard Childress's own office has been preserved as part of the museum. Walking through is closer to ...

Image: Michael Barera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Childress Racing Museum: Fifty Cars and an Operating Engine

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum holds more than fifty stock cars. More than half were driven by Earnhardt. The famous black No. 3 cars dominate, including the 1998 Daytona 500 winner and the 1995 Brickyard 400 winner, along with the brightly colored cars Earnhardt drove in NASCAR All-Star Races betwe...

Image: Michael Barera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Childress Racing Museum: Beyond Cup

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum is not only about Cup Series glory. It displays cars from the NASCAR Xfinity Series, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, and the ARCA Racing Series, the rungs that drivers and teams use to develop talent before reaching the top tier. One of Earnhardt's car haulers, ...

Image: Michael Barera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Childress Racing Museum: The Conservation Gallery

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0. Past the racing displays is a hunting and conservation gallery that surprises some visitors. It holds mounted animals taken by Childress on hunting trips, including brown bears, a cougar, a Cape buffalo, elk, a polar bear, and white-tailed deer. The juxtaposition is part of the s...

Image: Michael Barera | CC BY-SA 4.0

Richard Childress Racing Museum: Why Welcome

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town is named Welcome, and that is not a tourist board's invention. It sits just off Interstate 85 in Davidson County, between Lexington and Winston-Salem, in the foothills where stock car racing grew out of moonshine running and Sunday-afternoon county-fair tracks. NASCAR's ...

Image: Michael Barera | CC BY-SA 4.0