20 years ago today....We lost Dale Earnhardt.

Very sad. Not even a Nascar guy but Dale was one of my favorites back in the day. The crash still looked horrific.

Repost from the NASCAR season thread...

Remember it like it was yesterday. I cried after I found out.

During the off season that year, ESPN ran a special about nascar's hardest hits. They had one where Schrader wrecked in turn 1 at Dayton a few years previous. His car caught the bottom of the track, hooked right and he went straight up the track into the wall. He said it was the hardest hit he ever took. Earnhardt's hit looked just like it. As soon as I saw him take off, I knew it was bad.

If you've not seen it, you should watch the special The Day It goes through the whole incident from start to finish. A lot of it is from Michael Waltrip's point of view. But they interview Scharader, MIkey, DW and RC. It's a really good watch and will bring a tear to your eye.

Highly recommend reading ESPN’s 4 part story on the incident and the aftermath. Really well written.

I think NASCAR would be in a significantly different place than it currently is (primarily talking about on-track competition) if Dale Earnhardt were still alive. Dale was the voice of the garage, particularly in the second half of his career. NASCAR listened to him like they simply didn't listen to anyone else, and Dale was willing to express his opinions on what NASCAR was doing wrong. He was a massive influence. There is no better example than his comments after the 2000 Daytona 500, when after the race he went scorched Earth on NASCAR over that they had done to the competition (particularly at restrictor plate tracks) and how they had hurt it. NASCAR listened, swiftly made changes, and ended up creating what was probably the best rules package NASCAR has ever had, particularly on superspeedways.

If Dale were still around, Dale Earnhardt Inc. would likely still be a team, so he would still be a massive influence on NASCAR's decisions. I believe this would result in NASCAR having rules and cars that would produce far superior on-track competition than we currently have. That said, his death did push forward safety in auto racing like nothing else could have, and it would have been a slower road to get to our current place safety-wise had he not died (not that it is good that he died).

quote:

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I just can never imagine what Kenny Schrader saw when he got to Dale's car. He was the 1st one there as most know.

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He talks about it here. When he does, he looks like he's seen a ghost. You can tell that those images haunt him to this day.

LINK

LINK

This is a good clip from Dale Jr.'s podcast podcast when Michael Waltrip was a guest. They talked about the race and the aftermath: YouTube

quote:

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I just can never imagine what Kenny Schrader saw when he got to Dale's car. He was the 1st one there as most know. That is something that will haunt him till he dies. And he has never told Junior or Kelley what he saw, and they respect him for it.

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"Here's the deal," Schrader said. "When I went up to the car ... I knew. I knew he was dead, yeah."
"I didn't want to be the one who said 'Dale is dead,'"

Because he's still relevant. He's the Indy version of JJ. That Wheldon shite was so tragic.

I'll admit it didn't look that bad to me when it happened. Darrell Waltrip knew immediately though.

I was at Talladega when a driver died in an ARCA race in the early eighties when he hit the inside barrier right in front of us and that was brutal but Dale's wreck didn't look like that to me. Sad memories all around.