RCR Needs To Go With A Free Agent This Time

What does the NASCAR Cup Series lineup of Richard Childress Racing have in common the last four seasons?

Homegrown talent.

Well, mostly. Some drivers followed paths that took them to other teams at one point or another. But each of RCR’s full-time drivers since 2019 competed for the organization’s NASCAR Xfinity Series teams prior to their Cup promotions.

Austin Dillon, RCR’s elder statesman? Multiple NASCAR Camping World Truck Series seasons with the team, followed by a pair of Xfinity conquests (2012 and 2013) prior to his move to Cup in 2014 in the No. 3. Daniel Hemric, prior to his one-year RCR showcase in the Cup No. 8 in 2019, ran the preceding two Xfinity seasons for the team. His replacement from 2020 to now, Tyler Reddick, drove one championship-winning season for RCR in Xfinity in 2019.

The RCR Xfinity program has soldiered on since Reddick’s promotion. In 2022, the team fields two full-time cars for Sheldon Creed and Austin Hill, both rookies who moved up this year from the Truck Series.

And beginning in 2024, there’s room at the inn on the Cup side, after Reddick announced earlier this week his departure from RCR after 2023 to drive for 23XI Racing.

Obvious choice is for RCR to keep doing what it’s been doing, right? Pick from its talent pool in the development series to partner with, one assumes, Dillon starting in 2024?

Probably. But that’s not what should happen.

And maybe that’s silly to say. Why have a team in a feeder series like Xfinity if you’re not trying to develop someone to the next level? What’s the point of fielding rides for up-and-comers like Creed and Hill if you have no intention of seeing that transition from budding potential star to actual star happen within the confines of your own organization?

Let me be clear: I’m actually not opposed to one or both of those guys running in the Cup Series for RCR sometime down the line. Hell, maybe it’ll even happen in 2024, assuming both stick with the team after 2022 (neither’s situation past this year is currently known) and seem worthy of the promotion (two wins for Hill this season indicate there might be something there; jury’s out on a top-five-less Creed).

But that should only occur if RCR opts to move to a three-car operation, something the team last did in 2017 when it fielded entries for Dillon, Ryan Newman and Paul Menard. Or if, in what seems to be a fairly unlikely scenario, Dillon decides to drive for someone else (or if he retires, which…