Richard Childress pauses a moment, considering the question.

How differently would his life and career have turned out had Dale Earnhardt not returned to Childress' team in 1984? Together, they went on to win six NASCAR championships and riches beyond imagination.

Childress pauses, and then answers.

“

We had won some races with Ricky Rudd, won some poles, won some races. We had the opportunity to keep Ricky with Wrangler or go with Dale and we chose Dale. So who knows how it would've turned out.

”

-- RICHARD CHILDRESS

"It's one of those things you'll never know," Childress said during Charlotte Motor Speedway's annual media tour. "It's just hard to say, because Dale was a huge player.

"We had won some races with Ricky Rudd, won some poles, won some races. We had the opportunity to keep Ricky with Wrangler or go with Dale and we chose Dale. So who knows how it would've turned out."

Who knows, indeed? Just imagine a NASCAR universe in which Earnhardt did in fact drive in his prime for Junior Johnson, rather than Childress.

Think about Johnson firing Darrell Waltrip in order to hire Earnhardt, or how Bill Elliott's career in the mid-80s might have fared without sponsorship from Coors beer. It sounds crazy, like something out of a bizarre NASCAR-themed science fiction movie.

Crazy, yes. But very nearly true.

Prior to the 1984 season, Johnson had a signed contract with Wrangler Jeans to sponsor one of his two teams. Officials of the company wanted to continue its working relationship with Earnhardt, who had driven a yellow-and-blue Wrangler-backed car the previous three seasons. That meant Earnhardt was in and Waltrip was out.

That's not all. Though the deal hadn't been signed, Johnson also said that he had a verbal agreement with Coors beer to back a second car to be driven by Neil Bonnett beginning in 1984.

"At the end of [1983], Richard Childress was running Ricky Rudd and Earnhardt couldn't go back over there," Johnson said. "I had two teams then. Well, I needed two sponsors. I put Wrangler [and Earnhardt] in Darrell's team.

"I knew the Coors people out in the West. I knew them pretty good, because I talked to them a lot ... when I'd go to Riverside and stuff. I called them up and they wanted to sponsor Neil Bonnett, so I had my sponsors."

The implications, really, are quite staggering. Some key questions: Would Earnhardt have won seven Cup championships, tying him with Richard Petty for most in NASCAR history? Would an Earnhardt-Johnson teaming have worked? How well would Earnhardt's irresistible force played alongside Johnson's immovable object? It would have been an interesting relationship, to say the least.

Where would Waltrip have landed? Would he have won a third championship, after capturing his first two with Johnson in 1981 and 1982?

“

Darrell did me a great job, and I ain't saying that Earnhardt would've done a better job. I couldn't ask for a better job than Darrell did for me.

”

-- JUNIOR JOHNSON

What might have happened had Bill Elliott's Harry Melling-owned team not landed backing from Coors beginning in 1984? He had won the first race of his career in the 1983 season finale at Riverside, but without Coors, how much longer could the Melling operation have survived?

Would Elliott have won the Winston Million in 1985 or the championship three years later? Would he have become "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville," one of the most popular drivers the sport has ever known?

The chain of events was set into motion when car owner Rod Osterlund unexpectedly sold Earnhardt's team to maverick J.D. Stacy. Unhappy with the situation, Earnhardt almost immediately began to look elsewhere. Johnson helped broker a deal to place Earnhardt with Childress, who was at the time a struggling independent driver getting by on the thinnest of shoestring budgets.

So small was Childress' outfit, Earnhardt left at the end of the season. He wanted to drive for Johnson, but Waltrip was fresh off winning his first Cup title and had been signed for two more seasons.

Again, Johnson helped guide Earnhardt's career path.

"[Earnhardt would do] just about anything I told him," Johnson said.

"I asked him, 'What about going with Bud Moore? Let me see if I can get a break in my operation to where I can hire you, and I will. Well ... he went down there for two years. I knew I couldn't do anything for two years, because my contract [with Waltrip] was that long."

Earnhardt did drive a Bud Moore-owned Ford -- Ford?!? Yes, Ford -- in 1982 and 1983, with three wins to his credit. Again, however, Earnhardt planned to change teams at the end of the '83 season. That's when Johnson kicked into gear, trying to bring Earnhardt on board.

The agreement with Wrangler signed and with Coors nearly so, Johnson got a call from Coors' major rival, Budweiser. The St. Louis brewery offered big money, more money than Johnson could possibly turn down.

"Budweiser calls me up and says, 'I'll give you twice as much money as you've got now to sponsor both cars,'" Johnson said. "I said, 'Lord, have mercy ... I've gotta take that. So I went to Richard Childress and said, 'If you'll go back and get Earnhardt, I've got a signed contract here you can have. You don't have to go no further. You've got a driver and a contract and money to race with.'

"I called the guy that worked for Bill Elliott. He was hunting for a sponsor, and I told him what was going on with Coors. I did not have the contract signed with them. We [verbally] cut a deal, and I called them and told them I couldn't take the deal and told them about Bill Elliott. That's how Bill Elliott got them."

Waltrip wound up staying with Johnson, winning a third championship in '85 before leaving to join Hendrick Motorsports two years later.

Ironically, it was Elliott's Coors-sponsored Ford that dominated most of the 1985 season, winning 11 races and a $1 million bonus for capturing that season's Daytona 500, Winston 500 at Talladega and Darlington's Southern 500.

Elliott drove for Johnson from 1992 to 1994.

"Darrell did me a great job, and I ain't saying that Earnhardt would've done a better job," Johnson said. "I couldn't ask for a better job than Darrell did for me. ... Earnhardt would've been a more explosive-type [driver]. Everybody says, 'You would've won a whole lot more races with Earnhardt than you would Darrell.'

"But you've got to figure in that Earnhardt was harder on a car. ... Darrell took care of the car. He went when he had to, and he could get the job done. I wouldn't say he could out-drive Earnhardt, but I'll guarantee he could hang with him. When [Waltrip] went after it, he'd go get it."

And the rest really is history.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.