Earnhardt Son Faces Father`s Shadow

Transcription

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Page ii
Pages 2–15, 94–106 © The Associated
Press. Photos: AP/Wide World Photos.
Used with permission.
Pages 16–31 © Roland Lazenby, Jason
Mitchell. Photos: David Durochik and
Nigel Kinrade/SportsPics Photography.
Pages 32–93, 107–170 © 2001 H&S Media.
Photos: AP/Wide World, Icon SMI,
TimePix, Reuters, Driveronamission.com.
This book is not sponsored or endorsed
by NASCAR or its affiliates. This is not an
official publication.
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Fans Pay Tribute to Earnhardt
One year later, the racing community remembers
4
Earnhardt’s Presence Still Strong
Daytona grapples with both the legend and tragic end of
the Intimidator
10
Earnhardt Son Faces Father’s Shadow
Dale Jr. carves his own name in NASCAR
16
An Intimidating Presence
Dale’s career still casts a shadow on NASCAR
24
A Painful Reflection
NASCAR returns to the scene of the Dale Earnhardt tragedy
32
The Final Turn
Earnhardt fought to the end on a tragic day
42
King of the Road
In racing and in life, nobody did it quite like he did
58
The Intimidator
The one-of-a-kind driver more than lived up to his nickname
66
Bittersweet Memories
For Earnhardt, Daytona meant triumph, frustration and tragedy
74
Continuing a Legacy
Earnhardt Jr. will strive to uphold his family’s tradition
82
Where Legends Are Made
Nothing else matches the tradition, spectacle of Daytona
IV
Dale Earnhardt: Forever in Our Hearts
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Page v
Driver’s Last Prayer Was for Safety, Wisdom
Preacher Says
Preacher hears Earnhardt’s last prayer
98
Festive Daytona Scene Turns Sour
Colleagues and fans react in shock
100 Earnhardt’s Legacy Will Remain
Winners come and go, but legends live forever
104 Dale Earnhardt’s Legacy
Follow his incredible career
106 The Sport Speaks Out on Its Lost Legend
Reaction to Dale Earnhardt’s death
110 The Final Farewell
A nation mourns the fallen NASCAR legend
128 Picking up the Pieces
NASCAR struggles through its grief to find a way to endure
136 A Modern Day Hero
Like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, Dale Earnhardt stood tall
in his sport
142 On a Roll
A retrospective of the Intimidator’s record seven Winston Cup
championships
158 The Man in Black
Why Earnhardt’s greatness seemed to be destiny
V
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Fans Pay Tribute
to Earnhardt
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MOORESVILLE, N.C.—Loaded with newspapers and
tapes she collected since Dale Earnhardt’s death, Pat
Guessford drove nearly five hours to pay tribute to the
NASCAR great.
“We keep looking for things that will be closure, but
I keep looking for that No. 3 car to come around the
corner,” said Guessford, who lit a candle with her mother and son.“I’m just looking for something to get over
the emotional part of it, and have it be a good memory.”
Earnhardt was killed a year ago on the final lap of the
Daytona 500 when his car slammed into a wall.
About 350 people attended a candlelight vigil outside
Earnhardt’s museum and shop on the anniversary of his
death, and about 1,000 people visited the site during
the day.
The fans came from as far away as Kentucky and
Minnesota, and they filled 24 message boards with
prayers and promises that they would never forget their
favorite driver.
Andy Kochera and his son left around 1:00 A.M. from
Maryland and drove seven hours so they could attend
the vigil.
Kochera, who placed decals on his black Monte
Carlo so it would look like Earnhardt’s race car, said he
needed closure.
“I stayed in Maryland last year, and there was something missing—I couldn’t complete my grieving,”
Kochera said.“Being here with everybody else, it makes
you feel like a family.”
Lisa Hamrick, of West Virginia, brought peace lilies
and a sympathy card, just as thousands did in the days
following Earnhardt’s death. Even though the sun was
already down, many fans wore dark sunglasses that
were a trademark of the driver known as “The
Intimidator.”
Some fans said they still watch racing, and many
cheer for Earnhardt’s son, Dale Jr., but others say they
have lost interest.
“Racing will never be the same for me,” said
Winston-Salem’s Barbara Ellis, who wore an Earnhardt
sweatshirt and No. 3 earrings.“I just can’t bring myself
to watch it. I hope someday, but it’s so hard for me,
because I expect that No. 3 to go around the track.”
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Earnhardt’s Presence
Still Strong
By Mike Harris
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—The winner of 2002’s Daytona 500 will have to share
Victory Circle with an intimidating presence.
Dale Earnhardt will be on the minds of many drivers and fans at the track where
he was killed in a last-lap crash a year ago.The seven-time Winston Cup champion
also has left a legacy of changes that have, hopefully, improved driver safety.
“I think about Dale Earnhardt every time I drive through the tunnel and every
time I get in the car here,” said three-time Daytona 500 winner Dale Jarrett.“I’m
sure I’ll be thinking about him when I get in the car Sunday.
“After that, though, all of us will be focusing on running a race.”
Among the dozen or so favorites to win the season-opening event will be Dale
Earnhardt Jr., who finished second to teammate Michael Waltrip last February, crossing the finish line only seconds after his father hit the wall and lost his life.
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Instead of slowing down the 26-year-old
Little E, his father’s death made him even
more determined to succeed.
Earnhardt Jr. kept racing and came back to
Daytona in July, running away with the Pepsi
400 on the 212⁄ -mile oval that his father loved
so much.
Still, it was a victory in the Daytona 500
that his father coveted more than any other.
It took him 20 years to get one.This will be
Junior’s third try and he hasn’t finished
worse than fourth.
But, as much as winning this race,
Earnhardt Jr. wants to earn the kind of
respect his father enjoyed.
“When he won the 500 here in ’98, the
respect he got from all the teams was amazing,” Junior said.“They wanted to beat him
and they worked against him and they raced
against him and then when he wins that race
they all go out and congratulate him, and
that’s never happened before and might not
ever happen again.That was probably the
coolest.”
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Although “The Intimidator” will certainly be
remembered Sunday, there are other, more current dynamics affecting this race.
Rules changes have raised questions about
what kind of competition the crowd of about
190,000 at Daytona International Speedway
and a huge television audience will see in the
500-mile race.
As retired seven-time Daytona 500 winner
Richard Petty said earlier this week:“NASCAR
is all about controversy.”
6
The latest brouhaha is over aerodynamic changes, with the Fords and
Dodges getting a break after the
Chevrolet and Pontiac teams dominated the preliminary events.
Since winter testing ended in
January, the Ford Tauruses have been
granted three-quarter-inch reductions
of their rear spoiler, while the almost
identical Dodge Intrepids finally got a
quarter-inch reduction on Friday after
considerable complaining about a disadvantage.
After only an hour of practice
Friday with the new rules in place,
Saturday’s “Happy Hour” final practice
was rained out.
“I don’t care about practice anyhow,” said two-time race winner
Sterling Marlin, a Dodge drive.“I’d just
as soon race right now.We’ve been
here long enough.
“We’re going to try our best to win,
but it’s going to be tough to get enough
Dodges up there to help each other. All
I’ve seen up front are Chevrolets and
Pontiacs. Some of the Fords got better
in practice yesterday, too.”
“I don’t think there’s any favorite,
really,” said Jeff Gordon, the four-time
and defending Winston Cup champion
who drives a Chevy. “I see Fords, Pontiacs,
Dodges and Chevys out there battling and
passing and leading and I think it will be a
great race.”
Not everybody agrees, though.
“If you’re a race fan coming to Daytona, save
your money, go to Rockingham,” said Ford driver Ricky Rudd, referring to next Sunday’s race
in North Carolina where aerodynamic rules
make far less difference.
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NASCAR seems to be in a catch-22, trying to
adjust the rules to even up competition while
trying to make all the teams happy.
Two years ago, the 500 was a bore, with little
passing and virtually no excitement.To remedy
that, rule changes were made at Daytona and
Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR’s two longest
and fastest ovals.
Three- and four-wide racing became the rule,
with passing throughout the field on virtually
every lap. Drivers could go from 18th to 1st and
from 1st to 18th in one lap.
Now, NASCAR has returned to rules closely
resembling those of 2000.Will that make it be
another sleep-inducing event?
“Sunday’s race won’t be like last year’s,”
Gordon said.“There won’t be as many lead
changes, but it’s still going to be exciting.There
will be a lot of racing and side-by-side action. I
don’t think it will be boring like 2000 was.”
The early laps could certainly be fun, with two
first-time Daytona 500 starters—pole-winning
rookie Jimmie Johnson and last year’s top rookie,
Kevin Harvick—leading the 43-car field to the
green flag.
Two-time Daytona 500 winner Gordon and
Waltrip, the winners of Thursday’s 125-mile
qualifying races, will be right behind, trailed
closely by Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart, who
already has won a pair of preliminary events
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and finished second in another during the
past week.
“Could be one heck of a wreck,” Johnson
joked after winning the pole for only his
fourth Winston Cup start.
Gordon, who co-owns Johnson’s car, isn’t
concerned, though.
“Jimmie and Kevin will do a good job,” he
said.“If they can’t stay up front, they’ll get
back in line and try to stay with the lead
pack like everybody else.”
The lineup also includes two other rookies, Ryan Newman, who is expected to vie
with Johnson for Rookie of the Year honors,
and Shawna Robinson, only the second
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woman ever to race in the 500. Janet Guthrie
raced here in 1977 and 1980.
“I’m very focused on what I’m here to do,”
said Robinson, who made it into her second
Winston Cup race despite crashing in her
qualifying race.
While the rookies are just getting started
on their careers, Sunday’s race will be the
finale for 60-year-old Dave Marcis, appearing
in this event for a record 33rd time and making his 882nd career start.
“I don’t really want to retire,” said Marcis,
who has five career wins but none since 1982.
“But people keep telling me I should. Maybe if
I win Sunday, they’ll change their minds.”
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With all the story lines in this race,
though, the legacy of Dale Earnhardt remains
the biggest.
Although NASCAR was already working on
safety changes in the wake of the deaths in
2000 of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin Jr. and Tony
Roper, the process was accelerated greatly
after Earnhardt’s death.
Among the changes going into Sunday’s
race, all 43 starters are required to wear head
and neck restraints, the cars will all be carrying black box data recorders and all crewmen and officials who venture over the pit
wall will have to wear helmets and fireproof
uniforms.
Earnhardt’s legend will also be riding with
the competitors on the racetrack.
Stewart, a former short track and openwheel star who has emerged as a top contender in stock cars, said Earnhardt is the
reason he is now a factor in racing at
Daytona.
“I’m finally starting to learn all those lessons Dale Earnhardt was teaching us,”
Stewart said.“He was teaching us by beating
us. Now we’re able to apply those lessons.”
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Earnhardt
Son Faces
Father’s
Shadow
By Jenna Fryer
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Dale Earnhardt Jr. wants a family. He wants to
mature a little more and be a better man.
Most of all, he wants to step out of his father’s shadow and be free to focus
on his own career.
In the year since Dale Earnhardt died in a wreck on the final lap of the
Daytona 500, his 27-year-old son has made peace with his passing and figured
out who he’s supposed to be.
“When my dad was here, I could just about do whatever I wanted to and get
away with a lot of things. I always had him to fall back on,” he said.“He always
had a way to laugh it off. Now . . . I don’t have anything else to fall back on but
how well I do it.That’s going to reflect on me instead of my father.”
He was representing his father Saturday when he drove a No. 3 Chevrolet—
Earnhardt’s famous number—to victory in the Busch race at Daytona. He
entered the race to fulfill one of his father’s sponsor commitments and ended
up celebrating in the winners circle.
“No. 3 is back in Victory Lane,” he said, surrounded by Earnhardt’s widow
and car owner Richard Childress.“I know my daddy would be happy.”
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Junior, as he’s commonly called, looks every
bit a Gen-Xer on the outside. His hat is always
on backward, his pants are baggy and his sunglasses are a constant. He has a goatee and
usually about two days’ growth surrounding
that.And he has a reputation as a party boy.
But he’s so much more complicated than
that. He’s a deep thinker, internalizing everything. He’s private, a little guarded and worries he’ll never meet the right woman.
He looks around the track and sees girls
only interested in his fame and money. He’s
jealous of the happiness enjoyed by his
married friends.
12
“I look at [them] and I can’t fool myself
into thinking that I don’t envy what they’ve
got and the future that they’re going to
have,” he said.“It would be nice to be a part
of that with somebody.
“I definitely want to have a little son that I
can take to the racetrack and once he’s old
enough to know what’s going on. I don’t
want to be retired by then.”
A year ago, a wife and son were the furthest things from his mind.Then, he was just
a race car driver, living in his father’s shadow and trying desperately to meet his high
standards and gain his approval.
For many years he wasn’t close to The
Intimidator, spending part of his high school
time at military school. But they eventually
bonded through racing, which gave them a
link in their different lifestyles.
Then, just when the relationship had
developed the way Junior wanted, his father
was gone, killed on the final turn of the
Daytona 500 while his son was racing on
ahead of him.
In an instant, everything changed. Junior
had new responsibilities and no one to tell
him how to handle them. So he does the
only thing he can, often thinking about
how his father would want him to do
things—and sometimes even hearing his
voice.
“I’ve got a lot of advice from my father
that I still fall back on and probably rely on
that more so than ever,” he said.
He has an unspoken understanding with
his stepmother,Teresa, who runs the
Earnhardt empire. She never needs to ask
when something’s bothering him. Junior said
she just knows.
“She’s not really an open type of person
that would show a lot of emotion,” he said.
“But she knows what I’m thinking most of
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the time, which is a good thing. If she
knows something is bothering me, we
don’t have to talk about it.”
There’s also a bond with fellow driver
Tony Stewart, of all people.The two are
complete opposites in everything and
aren’t friends to the point where they
hang out together.
But as NASCAR’s most popular driver,
Junior can look across the motorhome lot
and give a knowing nod to Stewart, one
of the most reviled in the sport.
“It’s kind of like we have an understanding of what each other is dealing
with!” Junior said.“He knows the tension
that I go through and I know what he’s
dealing with and the backlash that he got
last year.
“It’s so easy to foul up like that and slip
and make a mistake and all hell breaks
loose right in your face. It’s unfair.”
It’s created a connection on the track,
where the two aren’t afraid to hook up
and draft with each other.They’ve been
doing that all week at Daytona—they
crossed the finish line 1-2 when Stewart
won the non-points race here last weekend—and are expected to bully their
way around the track together in
Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500.
He’s considered one of the favorites to
win the race, something it took his father
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Earnhardt Son Faces Father`s Shadow

Transcription

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