HARRISBURG, N.C. — With basketball legend Michael Jordan becoming a NASCAR Cup Series car owner, the number Jordan wore during much of his playing career will return to America’s premier racing series following a brief hiatus.

Bubba Wallace will drive the No. 23 Toyota for 23XI Racing, which is owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin.

Overall statistics show that cars carrying No. 23 in the NASCAR Cup Series have visited victory lane three times while recording 102 top-10 finishes in 856 starts. One-hundred-seventeen drivers have wheeled car No. 23 in at least one series race.

Irwin Blatt, of Bern Township, Pa., was the first driver to use No. 23 in a NASCAR Cup Series event when he finished 15th during the Sept. 11, 1949, race at Pennsylvania’s Langhorne Speedway.

Driving a 1946 Ford, Blatt completed 176 of the 200 laps as he made the first of his four series starts.

Frank Mundy, a familiar figure among NASCAR’s earliest stars, was the first to win a Cup Series race in car No. 23. That victory came on June 16, 1951, at South Carolina’s Columbia Speedway, when Mundy started from the pole in Perry Smith’s 1951 Studebaker and led 167 of the 200 laps around the half-mile dirt track.

Mundy added a second victory later in the 1951 season and Al Keller scored No. 23’s most recent victory when he beat Buck Baker by two full laps to win the March 28, 1954, race at Oglethorpe Speedway in Savannah, Ga.

Jimmy Spencer tops the list with 157 Cup Series starts in car No. 23. Those races were run between 1995 and ’99 when the modified graduate drove for car owner Travis Carter.

Doug Yates is second with 61 starts during the early 1960s and Hut Stricklin took the green flag 52 times while driving for Carter.

BK Racing was the most recent caretaker of No. 23 and David Ragan was the last to use it for a full 36-race season when he drove for the organization in 2016.

The number’s most recent start came on Nov. 18, 2018, when J.J. Yeley finished 32nd at Florida’s Homestead-Miami Speedway aboard the No. 23 Ford after Front Row Motorsports acquired the assets of BK Racing.

— Short-track racers can learn about perseverance from Chase Briscoe.

With the former sprint car racer from Mitchell, Ind., slated to drive the No. 14 Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing next season, we dug up something Briscoe shared with us for a SPEED SPORT feature in 2017.

“I’d been down here (North Carolina) for two-and-half to three years and I didn’t have a hint of a ride. I was just kind of volunteering and didn’t really know where to go. I’d been going back and forth to Indiana maybe once a month, trying to race a sprint car here and there. I didn’t have a chance of going stock car racing. I didn’t have a sponsor or any family money,” said Briscoe, who had given up on launching a stock car career.

“I was going back home and try to race sprint cars for a living. I think I was in Kentucky at the time and I got a call. They said they had heard about me from a couple of people and they wanted to know if I’d be interested in coming to the race shop to see it and perhaps do some testing for them.

“Of course, I was playing hard to get but down deep I was desperate as could be. I went and raced sprint cars that weekend, drove back down on Sunday night and met with them on Monday morning.”

That meeting with the brain trust of Cunningham Motorsports changed Briscoe’s life.

“I went from some sleeping on couches and having an older vehicle, to now Ford supplies me with a new vehicle and I have a place that’s actually mine. I didn’t have any money whatsoever, and now I’m making a living driving race cars.”

Have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.