Richard Childress: NASCAR icon offers one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine
Richard Childress has stepped forward to assist the people of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression. The legendary NASCAR driver and team owner has pledged to donate one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine's armed forces.
On Wednesday, Childress told Fox & Friends presenter Brian Kilmeade, "I was listening the other day and heard President Zelenskyy say he didn't want out, he wanted ammunition."
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"I called my good friend Fred Wagenhals, who is the Chairman of AMMO, Inc., which is a publicly traded company, POWW, and I said, 'Fred, we gotta help these people. They need ammunition.'" And he stepped right up, he said, "'We’ll do it,' and now we’re turning our production to this as our number one priority."
Childress is on the Board of Directors of AMMO, Inc., and is believed to be worth $250 million. When asked why the cause meant so much to him, he responded, "This is a wake-up call for America, and why we have to have our Second Amendment. We have 82 thousand, 82 million gun owners in America, and to see the people in Ukraine fighting — it's terrible to see the lives that are being lost over there. We have to do all we can, and I felt with Ammo Inc. and myself, we were doing the right thing."
Childress has been a part of NASCAR for almost five decades, first as a driver and then as an owner since the early 1980s. Before his deadly incident in the 2001 Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt Sr. notably drove Childress' No. 3 Chevy for the entirety of his career.
The practicalities of delivering the ammunition to the front lines aren't as simple as packing it into a box and flying it. "We're working with some government agencies, but to get it there quickly, we're going to work through a private company that will be working to get it in there," Childress said. "The number one ammo they're needing right now over there is the 7.62s, and that's what we're going to be producing."
Richard Childress Racing, Childress' NASCAR Cup Series company, presently fields vehicles for Tyler Reddick, who dominated the first two stages of last weekend's Auto Club 400 before a flat tyre forced him out of contention, and his grandson, Austin Dillon, who finished second behind Kyle Larson. Since its inception in 1969, RCR has won six Cup Series championships.
