To this day, watching the replay, you expect him to get out of the car with mixed emotions. Angry with whomever he felt started the whole crash, but thrilled that two cars he owned had finished 1-2 in the Great American Race.
But knowing what we knew soon thereafter, Dale Earnhardt’s crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 was a perfectly imperfect storm — lots of speed, and impact at what would be called the “killer angle,” just a bit to the left of head-on.
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But most of all, a wreck without all of the driver protections that would become common in the aftermath of NASCAR’s most public — and publicized — on-track death in the sport’s history. Some consider it Dale Earnhardt’s most endearing and enduring legacy — the safety revolution his death triggered, a revolution (knock on wood) involving 25 subsequent seasons without a NASCAR racing fatality.
Dale Earnhardt in his happy place, in the Daytona garage with his No. 3 Chevrolet.
That’s a big part of the story you’ll hear a lot about this past week on the 25th anniversary of the crash. The other part is the story of loss. Personal loss for those in the immediate Earnhardt orbit, where the gravitational pull was great. And overall loss for a sport that lost its Hollywood-caliber leading man.
If your memory is fuzzy or if you simply weren’t around for it, you might wonder if the remembrances have been inflated with time, as they often are.
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No, they’re not. You simply can’t overestimate what “The Intimidator” meant to both fans and detractors alike, nor the void his loss left in an industry still hoping a suitable replacement surfaces someday.
So far, they haven’t even come close.
Dale Earnhardt fans remain a loyal bunch.
Before the tragedy, Earnhardt’s final Speedweeks was out of the norm
Earnhardt’s death on Feb. 18, 2001, came on the final lap of perhaps the oddest Daytona Speedweeks he’d ever experienced.
He came to town with 34 total Daytona wins, beginning with the 1980 Bud Shootout, though 10 straight wins in Thursday’s 125-mile qualifying races, his long-awaited Daytona 500 win in 1998, and his 34th in the 2000 IROC race.
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No one else is even close to that Daytona record — Tony Stewart is second, with 19, while Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Bobby Allison are tied with 17.
But in 2001, Dale Earnhardt was in a supporting role. It began during his debut in the Rolex 24, where he was part of a two-car Corvette team that included Dale Jr. and several sports-car veterans. The Earnhardts’ Corvette, which they shared with Andy Pilgrim and Kelly Collins, finished fourth overall while the sister ’Vette won the marathon race.
Dale Earnhardt in Daytona’s Victory Lane after the 2001 Rolex 24, but not as a winner. Here he congratulates Ron Fellows, one of the co-drivers of the winning Corvette team. Its sister car, with Earnhardt as a co-driver, finished fourth.
Earnhardt, who’d happily integrated himself into the team during testing and pre-race practice sessions, marched to Victory Lane and was all smiles as he celebrated with all of his new teammates from both Corvette entries.
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It was a side of Earnhardt few had seen.
Several days later, the NASCAR portion of Speedweeks unfolded and included some more unfamiliar roles for Earnhardt. In the exhibition Bud Shootout, a week after the Rolex 24 and a race he’d won six times, he was passed by Tony Stewart on the next-to-last lap and finished second.
Four days later, in the qualifying race now known as the Duel — he’d won 12 of those in his career, including 10 straight! — he led seven of the final eight laps, but on the eighth, he was passed by Sterling Marlin, who was first to the checkers.
Friday bought the International Race of Champions and the first of four 2001 races on its schedule. Earnhardt was particularly fond of competing in a field of 12 racing stars from various forms of motorsports, and especially fond of racing them at Daytona, where he’d won six IROC races in 12 starts.
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But on this Friday in 2001, things literally took a turn. Earnhardt was leading — yet again — as he came past the flag stand for the 38th time in the 40-lap race. Former Indy 500 champ Eddie Cheever attempted to pass him on the outside coming out of the frontstretch tri-oval.
The two cars banged side-to-side at about 185 mph, and while everyone expected the Indy driver to learn a lesson, it was Earnhardt who was sent to the left, off the track and through the grass, an unfortunate detour that usually ended badly.
Usually.
Ironically, Earnhardt getting roughed up actually added to his legend. Through the grass, he kept his foot in the throttle and not only returned to the track in Turn 1, but blended back into the race without incident, though way behind the leaders.
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“I can’t tell you how incredible it is. Dale Earnhardt, what a job,” said Dale Jarrett, who’d skirted the dust-up and won the race. “He showed why he’s the greatest race-car driver in the world right there. That car was supposed to wreck, and wreck everybody with it.”
Dale Earnhardt was forced to take it to the grass and save it after “tradin’ paint” with Eddie Cheever (above) during the 2001 IROC race at Daytona.
Earnhardt playfully retaliated on the cool-down lap, sending Cheever into a slow-speed spin down the backstretch. He marched to Cheever’s car on the post-race grid, and though some were anticipating possible fireworks, Earnhardt grinned a big grin, cussed a bit and cupped the back of Cheever’s neck in one of Earnhardt’s signature personal moves.
Mentally, race fans bookmarked the season’s next IROC race, two months later in Talladega. Cheever quickly and forcefully tried to play down any hint of animosity that day at Daytona.
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“I have no rivalry with Earnhardt,” he said. “I have a lot of problems in life, and that’s not one of them.”
In April, Cheever was one of 11 drivers — not 12 — who competed in Talladega’s IROC race.
The final lap
Dale Earnhardt’s car careened up the track in Turn 4 and made contact with Ken Schrader’s car before hitting the wall at a deadly speed and angle.
Up until late afternoon on that final Sunday of 2001 Speedweeks, Earnhardt’s performances and results had been just a bit off-kilter. He’d remained front and center, and remained the man to beat at the track where he’d long dominated, but never before had he been routinely booted from leader to follower, and in such dramatic fashion.
All of that was swept away on Lap 200, of course, but even in the moments immediately preceding the fatal crash, we again were witnessing something once unthinkable.
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Maybe he simply didn’t have the needed horsepower to catch the two drivers ahead of him — Michael Waltrip and Dale Jr., both driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc., starting its fourth season as a full-time Cup Series organization.
That might be the case, but it sure seemed to some as if he was sitting there in third place and fighting like hell to keep potential pursuers occupied while the two cars he owned sped off Turn 4 toward the checkers.
As Waltrip and Dale Jr. extended their lead, Earnhardt’s black No. 3 was in a four-car knot with Kenny Schrader, Sterling Marlin and Rusty Wallace. Earnhardt was in the center lane, with Schrader just outside his right-rear and Marlin just inside his left-rear, with Wallace trailing Earnhardt by a few feet in the center lane.
With the cars bobbling slightly, as they do in the high-speed draft, Earnhardt’s left-rear and Marlin’s right-front made ever-so-slight contact. Earnhardt’s car turned left, touched the track’s lower apron and shot to the right, back up the track.
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The crash would’ve likely been a rough one, but its fatal conclusion may have been sealed when Earnhardt’s careening car clipped Schrader’s and was turned toward the outside wall in the aforementioned killer angle.
Lasting star power and a safety revolution: Dale Earnhardt’s twin legacies
In 1964, NASCAR lost three drivers to racing accidents — Jimmy Pardue, superstar Fireball Roberts and two-time defending champion Joe Weatherly.
Weatherly had crashed at the road course in Riverside, California. He didn’t use a driver’s side window net because he feared being trapped in a burning car — a particularly legitimate fear in those days. Without the net, his upper body was flung outside his window opening and he was killed when his head hit a retaining wall.
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Roberts died due to extensive burns suffered in a crash at Charlotte four months later. Gas spilled heavily into his car during the crash, a flame ignited, and he barely escaped, only to die five weeks later.
“The Intimidator”
Pardue also died at Charlotte Speedway, crashing through a guardrail and down an embankment during a tire test.
In short order, sensing quick fixes to the Weatherly and Roberts incidents, window nets and rubberized fuel cells were mandated.
Thirty-six years later, NASCAR lost another three racers — truck racer Tony Roper at Texas, Cup racers Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin at New Hampshire. All three died after crashing head-long into concrete walls.
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There had been talk about stepped-up experiments with “soft wall” technology, and a head-and-neck restraint device (the HANS) was gaining popularity among racing organizations.
No American tracks were outfitted with the softer walls, and it’s believed only two racers — Brett Bodine and Dale Jarrett — wore HANS Devices in the 2001 Daytona 500. Later in 2001, NASCAR began mandating neck-restraining devices. By 2002, Indianapolis began the long line of tracks covering their concrete walls with something called a SAFER Barrier (steel and foam energy reduction), designed by Dr. Dean Sicking at the University of Nebraska.
Those are undoubtedly the two biggest reasons NASCAR hasn’t experienced a fatality since 2001. To this day, every time fans see a head-on crash and watch as the driver crawls out of the car and walks away, many wonder if he’s among those who have been saved by the post-Earnhardt safety revolution.
That revolution included changes in the way safety-belt systems are built and utilized, crush-zone technology in the newer generation of race cars, cockpit adjustments to help stabilize the upper body, concussion protocols and a traveling medical team specifically trained for rapid deployment.
The Dale Earnhardt statue is a popular photo stop for fans outside Daytona International Speedway.
Dale Earnhardt’s rise to fame and his unmatched desire to get to the front and stay there, regardless of feathers ruffled along the way, subsequently raised the profile of NASCAR and therefore made a lot of money for a lot of people.
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That would’ve been a helluva legacy in itself.
But in the end, his tragic death ignited newly serious demands to do everything possible to keep racers alive and healthy. That’s an entirely different form of legacy, but also one worth remembering.
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Dale Earnhardt’s legacy still a NASCAR force 25 years after the crash
