re: Where were you 18 years ago today? Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr. RIP 1951-2001

I found this old link about BIR, thought you might remember some of the names. That track was pretty nice and like many others, it's just a memory now.
BIR

It was the only nascar race I watched beginning to end. I don’t know why I decided to watch. I feel like I cursed the sport.

I was referring to Birmingham International Raceway, but I’ve heard a lot about Baton Rouge Speedway. I never raced there but I’ve been there with my dad when he was racing. It shut down before I started racing late models. It was supposedly modeled after Birmingham and Ray Putnam and Freddy Fryer were the ones to beat there.

I’ve never seen a decapitation in NASCAR. Earnhardt, Kenny Erwin, Adam Petty, Blaise Alexander, and Tony Roper were all killed by basil skull fractures, which basically snap your brain stem from your neck stretching. Your body is strapped into a solidly mounted seat and when you come to a sudden stop your head tries to keep going forward, especially with the extra weight of a helmet. The HANS device they come up with after Earnhardts death connects your helmet to the seat belts and I don’t think there has been a death from head injury since. At least not in the upper levels of Nascar.

I used to see Freddy at the NASCAR races every now and then back in the 90’s and 00’s. He was driving a transporter and working for Ganassi I believe. I remember the women loved him back in the day.

I wasn’t at Daytona the day Neil Bonnet was killed practicing but they said his sternum opened up he hit so hard and stopped so fast but his belts slid off his shoulders. A lot of the older drivers did pull their belts tight enough.

That was tough. He actually had a tire blow out. That was the last year Hoosier was in NASCAR. Hoosier and Goodyear were competing with each other in Nascar so they both kept coming out with softer tires to try and go faster than the other and it caused a lot of tire failures. Neil was a Hoosier driver. NASCAR decided to make Hoosier the lone tire manufacturer for ARCA and Goodyear the manufacturer for NASCAR after that so they could regulate the tires better. Goodyear obviously got the better end of that deal. It cost them a lot of money though.

Yeah, I don’t find ElGuacho funny at all.

What did Dale Earnhardt Sr and Pink Floyd have in common?
Their last big hit was "The Wall".

I’m worked for Sonic at the time in OKC. We had just announced a sponsorship agreement with him literally days before the crash.