The weather broke brightly and beautifully over Daytona
International Speedway on the morning of Feb. 18, 2001.
In the hours leading up to the 43rd edition of
the Daytona 500, an event that had long been known as the sport’s biggest and
most important race, the chamber-of-commerce sunshine lent itself to a mood
that was beginning to once again, very slowly, creep toward a cautious sense
of optimism. Another season was about to
start, and this would surely have to be a better year than the previous one had
been.
All three of NASCAR’s top-drawer touring divisions
experienced agonizing fatal accidents in the year 2000. First came the loss of
Adam Petty during a May Busch Series practice session at New Hampshire. There
was Kenny Irwin’s Winston Cup mishap at the same track, same turn, just a
couple of months later. Finally, Tony Roper’s crash during a Craftsman Truck
Series event at Texas in October was the final tragedy before the campaign's sad and
none-too-soon end.
That was then. This was a whole new deal, a fresh start. Those
involved in the three-ring circus known as NASCAR had regained an expectant
spring in their step as they made their way this way and that on the morning of
the season opener. Every team in the garage had a shot at making a run at the
championship. Every driver had a chance to be become the stuff of legend in
that afternoon’s race. How else would you explain Daytona 500 Cinderella
stories like Tiny Lund in 1963, Pete Hamilton in 1970 or Derrike Cope twenty
years after that?
Cope.
More than a decade later, the memory probably still stung
Dale Earnhardt. He was leading easily on the last blamed lap when a cut tire
handed the victory to Cope, a virtual unknown. That it was still so raw an
emotion, even after Earnhardt finally did win his first Daytona 500 in 1998,
was testament to just how important each and every edition of the event had
become.
That 1990 Daytona 500 made history. Then again, every Daytona 500 made history. Win this
race and it would be remembered forever.
PRE-RACE
Three months later, Ward Burton was still ticked off.
At Homestead the year before, Earnhardt kicked Burton and
Ricky Rudd into separate accidents. Rudd and Earnhardt had a history of
run-ins, so really, Homestead was just another chapter in a long-running … if
you want to call it a feud, then so be it. Certainly, Burton had mixed it up
with Earnhardt on a number of occasions since coming onto the scene full time
in 1994. Yet most of their dust-ups could ultimately be chalked up as “one of
them racin’ deals.”
But not Homestead. Not this time.
“I’ve never said this on an interview before, but Dale
had wrecked me because he was frustrated at Homestead,” Burton remembered. “I
was still quite perturbed with Dale at Daytona, and he knew it.”
Just before they were presented to the teeming crowd, Burton
issued a subtle reminder to Earnhardt that all had not been forgotten.
“I can remember getting ready to get introduced,” Burton
continued. “He was still waiting, and I purposely hit his shoulder with my
shoulder. I felt like he’d really done me dirty. I’ve always felt kinda
remorseful for that. But at the time and in the heat of the battle, the way you
handled Dale Earnhardt was really on the race track. But I was just letting him
know before the race started that I still had not forgotten it.”
Burton’s Bill Davis Racing Dodge was on the outside of
the starting grid’s fifth row in 10th place, while Earnhardt started
seventh on the inside of the row just ahead of the Virginian. To this day, the
image of Dale and Teresa Earnhardt saying what would turn out to be their final
goodbyes is firmly etched in Burton’s memory.
“When my wife [Tabitha] was giving me hugs as I was
getting in the car, and I can remember vividly [Earnhardt] giving Teresa a last
kiss,” Burton said. “Dale … he didn’t seem very comfortable at that moment. I
don’t know why. I guess we’ve all got a few butterflies getting ready to start
that race, because we know what can
happen.”
Andy Houston qualified ninth, lining him up directly
behind Earnhardt. Three days before, Houston finished fourth in the first of Daytona’s
two qualifying races, a spot back of Earnhardt. On pit road just before the
500, the seven-time Winston Cup champion took the opportunity to poke some fun
at the young man he called his “cousin in law.”
Houston’s father, legendary Busch Series driver Tommy
Houston, and Teresa Earnhardt’s father, Hal, are brothers.
“Early in the qualifier, Dale got into the back of me and
got me all sideways up through the middle of turns three and four,” Houston
said. “I thought I was gonna crash. I mean, I was way out of control. Well, when we got down there for pre-race for
the 500, he come up and grabbed me around the neck like he always does and
kinda squeezes you half to death.
“He said, ‘You were bad out of shape in that qualifying
race, wasn’t you?!?’ I said, ‘Yeah, because you had my back wheels off the
ground.’ He kind of snickered a little bit, and said, ‘Yeah … I knew you could
handle it.’ I told him, ‘You weren’t the one in there swattin’ at that steering
wheel.’ We kinda laughed about it for a few minutes.”
Moments later, Earnhardt, Burton, Houston and 40 other
drivers climbed into their cars, ready for battle. Forty-two of them would
climb back out.
THE BROADCASTER
Up in the television broadcast booth, Darrell Waltrip was
struggling to get used to his unfamiliar surroundings.
A Daytona 500 was about to take place without ol’ D.W. in
the field. Not since way back in 1972, a full 29 years previous, had that last happened.
What was he supposed to do? Where was his family supposed to go? There was no
team to hang out with in the garage and no pit stall to watch the race from
once it started. For the first time in his and wife Stevie's married life and
for the first time in the lives of their daughters Jessica and Sarah,
Waltrip was not going to be behind the wheel of a race car.
Waltrip, the self-assured and, yes, at times, very cocky
race car driver was now a fish out of water.
“I felt really lost,” Waltrip admitted. “I didn’t feel
too bad the early part of Speedweeks. I had a lot to do, production meetings. …
But then I’m doing a pre-race show when everybody else is doing driver
introductions. I was just doing things I’d never done before. It was all new to
me.
“It was exciting to be doing something new and different,
but it was also sad to think that I had turned a page. I wasn’t gonna be on pit
road any more. I wasn’t gonna put my helmet on and get in the car like I’d done
my whole life. I was gonna put a suit and a tie on and go stand in a TV booth.
It was the end of one long, long story and then, of course, the start of a new
one.”
Stevie Waltrip was also learning to cope with a new
reality. For quite some time, she had shared Bible passages with Earnhardt that
he would in turn tape to the dashboard of his race car. Should she still do so?
She wasn’t going to be at every race and she felt a little out of place making
her way to pit road without her husband, but they both knew how much the
exchange had come to mean to Earnhardt.
Dale Earnhardt had been in more on-track incidents with Darrell
Waltrip than either one of them could possibly have remembered. Yet in 1998,
when Waltrip’s career was at an all-time low, he was hired by Dale Earnhardt
Inc. to fill in for several races early in the year. It seemed to re-kindle a
fire within the three-time Winston Cup champion, something that he and his wife
would never forget.
She delivered the Scripture to Earnhardt on pit road,
just before the race. The passage was from the 18th chapter of
Proverbs, 10th verse.
The name of the
Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.
THE POLE SITTER
Few drivers have ever been more closely associated with a
manufacturer than Bill Elliott was with Ford in the 1980s and ‘90s. For legions
of his fans who had voted him the sport’s most popular driver 15 times to that
point, Elliott was Ford Motor Co. in
NASCAR. The Thunderbird that he once drove was not so much a race car as it was
a dang bullet.
Twice, he won the Daytona 500. That placed the red-headed
country boy amongst NASCAR’s elite, to be sure, but he’d also taken his beautiful
red, white and gold trimmed Ford from almost two laps down under green to win
at Talladega in that magical season of 1985. Two years later, he laid down a qualifying
speed of 212.809 mph at the same track. It’s a record that will never be
approached, much less topped.
Elliott, Ford. Ford, Elliott. For what seemed like
forever, no other combination seemed as rock-solid certain. Yet there Elliott
was, on the pole for the 2001 Daytona 500 … in a Dodge, of all things, that was
owned by Ray Evernham.
Dodge was making a splashy return to NASCAR after an
absence of more than 20 years, and one of the focal points of its strategy was
luring Evernham away from his own legendary gig as Jeff Gordon’s crew chief at
Hendrick Motorsports. For the brand-new organization, to sit on the inside of
the front row was huge.
“We put a lot of effort into it,” Elliott said. “Most of
the guys we had were very, very good at that sort of stuff. It was important
for a lot of us. I’d made a switch from Ford to Dodge, and Dodge kinda stuck
their neck out there with Ray. Ray moved over, started his own deal and worked
hard. A lot of guys put a lot of effort into it, and it all worked out.”
The green flag was dropped by NFL legend Terry Bradshaw, who’d
been chauffeured around the track the night before by Earnhardt. Elliott held
onto the point for all of one lap before he was swallowed up by Sterling
Marlin, also in a Dodge, this one fielded by Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix
Sabates. Although he ran a very solid, very Bill Elliott-like race, he did not
lead again the rest of the afternoon.
“I just kind of hung out, rode around, bided my time and
saved my stuff,” Elliott remembered.
THE BIG ONE
All went well for Burton for more than three-quarters of
the race. Nine times, he jockeyed himself into the lead. In all, Burton was at
the front of the field for a total of 53 laps, 14 more than Marlin.
For all that effort, Burton walked away with nothing more
than a wadded-up race car. On the 174th tour around Daytona’s
2.5-mile layout, almost within shouting distance of the end of the 200 lapper,
he was caught up in the genesis of a multi-car wreck on the backstretch. It was
The Big One, with half the field the remaining field – 19 cars – sustaining
damage. Tony Stewart flipped wildly in the melee, at one point landing squarely
on the windshield of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Bobby Labonte.
“It was going how a Daytona 500 might go,” Labonte said.
“One time, you’re up front and then in the middle, in the back and in between.
We situated ourselves, just making laps. I don’t remember what position we were
in, but we were gonna be far enough back that if they had a wreck, we were
gonna miss it.”
The plan didn’t work out so well. Not for Labonte, who
entered the 2001 Daytona 500 as the defending Winston Cup champion, and not for
many other teams.
“Lo and behold, Stewart’s upside down, flipping,” Labonte
continued. “I just got landed upon. There’s not a lot of time to react. There’s
a lot of smoke. There’s a lot of decisions that have to be made on gut instinct
in that moment. There’s a lot of other things out of your control. The guy that
was there is no longer there, and oh, by the way, there’s three more that’s got
involved in a split second.”
A decade later, Burton’s recall of the incident is
instantaneous. There is no need to sift through the haze of ten years’ worth of
memories. This one is right there at the forefront.
“I can tell you exactly
what happened,” Burton added. “I know it like it just happened yesterday. We’d
had a green-flag stop, and we came out running fourth or fifth. I was sucking up
to the 20 car, which was Tony Stewart, in the middle of turns one and two. I
was going to the outside of Tony … that’s just how strong my car was.
“Robby Gordon had not been in the picture all day. He hit
me one time in the right rear … I was a little crossed up, but was gonna save
it. He hit me again, and then I was going toward the pond [Lake Lloyd in the
Daytona infield]. My left front hit Tony’s right rear, and that’s what caused the
whole melee.”
It’s what Burton says next that gives one pause to consider
the “what ifs.” Burton doesn’t blame himself. He doesn’t blame Gordon for
getting into him. There’s no blame whatsoever … only a monstrous “what if.”
“I know if that
incident hadn’t happened, Dale Earnhardt would not have been killed that day,” Burton
said. “That set the chain of the rest of the events [in motion] … who was up
there and who wasn’t to have the situation going on later in the race. I say
that in a literal way, but not blaming an individual for Dale’s death. But that
moment, when the wreck started on the backstretch, is what created the event
later in the day.”
The race was red-flagged for 16 minutes and 25 seconds as
crews cleared battered car after battered car from the backstretch accident
site. Burton came back from the crushing disappointment of 2001 to win the Daytona
500 the very next year.
THE FINISH
Michael Waltrip first took control over the 2001 Daytona
500 just after the halfway point, when Burton gave up the point during a cycle
of green-flag pit stops. The younger Waltrip, winless in the first 462 starts
of his Cup career, went back to the top of the leaderboard when he wrestled the
top spot away from DEI teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. on lap 167.
Either Waltrip, Earnhardt Jr. or a third DEI driver,
Steve Park, were at the front until Marlin broke the hold for a single circuit,
lap 182. The senior Earnhardt led what would unimaginably be the last circuit
of his storied career on lap 183. It was Michael Waltrip’s race to win or lose
thereafter.
Those last laps were something to see, both in person and
on television. Darrell Waltrip’s excitement over his younger brother’s run was
building by the moment … this was very nearly as good as driving.
“One of the things I’ve really struggled with, even 10
years later, is that I’m still a race fan,” Darrell Waltrip said. “I still get
excited. I love the action on the track. It’s been hard, because you have your
brother out there and he’s about to win the Daytona 500. Here I am, I’m his
brother, I’m doing the telecast, millions of people are watching and I’m
pulling for my brother. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that, but
there are people who think you should not show any favoritism.
“I was excited. I just can’t hold back my emotion, and
that’s the way I was in that situation with my brother. I knew how that was
going to be for him. Dale had taken a chance on Michael to put him in that car,
because Dale knew that he could get the job done. I was just so proud of my
brother and for what Dale had done with that team. It was just snowballing. It
was hard to hold back. As the race wound down those last few laps, it became
more and more clear to me that Michael was going to win. I let it all hang out,
and I’m not sorry for it. I’d do it again.”
Then came that last forsaken, unspeakable lap.
No other single circuit in the history of NASCAR has been
so closely dissected as that afternoon’s final 2 ½ miles. As they flashed under
the white flag, Michael Waltrip led the Earnhardts, Junior and Senior, in that
order. Marlin and Ken Schrader were next in line, the five cars single file for
a moment.
Veterans Marlin and Schrader had made runs on Earnhardt’s
famous black No. 3 Chevrolet in the closing miles, Marlin ducking well below
the yellow line going into turn one at one point and Schrader peeking to the
high side. None of their moves worked, but they had to give it one last shot.
“Coming to the white, I’d been all over Dale trying to
get by,” Marlin said. “I kinda let off a little bit going down into turn one to
get a run at him, and I got under him coming off two. Schrader was with me, and
I said, ‘Well, we’re probably gonna run third. I can’t get to Michael and Dale
Jr.’ Schrader was pushing me, and all of a sudden, Schrader disappeared. I
looked in my mirror and said, ‘Where’d he go?!?”
All bets were off. Schrader left Marlin’s draft to grab
what he could for himself on the very last lap.
“I don’t remember s*** about [the race in general], but I
remember the end,” Schrader said. “We came off turn two, and I thought, ‘We’ve
got a chance to run third,’ and then all Hell broke loose.”
That it did. Schrader went to the high side on the
backstretch, and very nearly got around the elder Earnhardt, who tried to dart
to the inside in an attempt to block Marlin’s progress. With absolutely no help
up top, Schrader was all but defenseless. But, really, he’d had no other choice
than to go where he did.
“Going down the backstraightaway, I went up to the top
because they were … not … gonna … get … under … Dale,” said Schrader, his voice thick with emphasis. “It’s just not
gonna happen. He ain’t gonna let us get under him. That’s why I
went around Dale. My thinking was, ‘OK, once we get down to turn three, somebody’s gonna realize that we’re not
all getting underneath Dale. They’ll come to the high side, and I’ll already be
there.’”
Some would later insist that Earnhardt was blocking in
order to help the two cars ahead of him that he just so happened to own, one of
them driven by his own son. It made for a good story, regardless of whether or
not it was actually the case.
“I figured that was no different than any other time he
went down a straightaway,” Schrader said matter-of-factly. “The race was
decided already. No one was gonna beat those two guys [Waltrip and Earnhardt
Jr.]. The race was decided, but I believe if [Earnhardt] had been [in position
to do so], he’d have done anything he could on the last lap to beat ‘em. But
right there when everything happened, he was worried about finishing third versus
fourth or fifth.”
The fuse was lit going into the third turn as Earnhardt
tried to hold off the rest of the field. Waltrip and Earnhardt Jr. were free and clear to decide the checkered
flag between them, while everyone else closed into what seemed like a single
hurtling mass of furious energy.
“When we got to turn three, Dale was crowding me down and
I guess Schrader was crowding him down to where we got three wide,” Marlin
continued. “It just slowed us down 10 miles an hour, and here come the whole
field, three wide behind us.”
The traffic jam in the final turn of the final lap
included Earnhardt a nose or so ahead of the pack in the middle with Rusty
Wallace on his rear bumper. Marlin was to the inside of Earnhardt and Schrader to
the outside. In all, no less than eight cars were separated by a split second …
less than that, even.
“When we drove off into [turn] three, Sterling had gotten
under Dale,” Elliott said. “I mean, we were all right there together … I mean,
we were all right there, just all
over each other. Dale tried to root down back in front of him.”
Marlin’s right front made contact in the scramble with
the left rear of Earnhardt’s car, shooting it up toward the wall and directly
into Schrader’s path. Earnhardt’s right front slammed hard into the outside
retaining wall. Many other accidents in many other races had appeared far more
serious – Stewart’s just a few laps earlier, for instance.
“Rusty got pretty close to Dale,” Marlin said. “That
looked like it got Dale loose. Dale kinda come down, crowded me down, got into
me. The whole thing started from there.”
As Schrader discusses it, he pulls up a YouTube clip of
the accident.
“I’m a foot or two away from him,” described Schrader, almost
as if he were a disassociated spectator. “I was right there. When he came up,
he just took us with him. My front bumper was in the middle of his door when he
came up. I’m in the middle of the race track, and Rusty and Sterling are inside
us. Everybody’s just in that pile, you know?”
Schrader first wound up pinned against the wall by the
right side of Earnhardt’s car, and the two remained in contact as they slid to
a stop on the apron of turn four. The world NASCAR once knew had ended.
This story was first posted on NASCAR.COM February 10, 2011.
