In the Blink of an Eye Page 6

  Dale grew up in the North Carolina town of Kannapolis. Racing was in his blood. His dad, Ralph Earnhardt, was one of the best short-track drivers around, although he never made it in racing’s big time. Dale’s father did what he could to discourage his son’s racing dreams, just as mine had. But Mr. Earnhardt’s efforts failed as miserably as Mr. Waltrip’s had. Maybe more so. Ralph worried that if Dale didn’t complete his education he’d be stuck in one of the cotton mills around Kannapolis. But Dale dropped out of school when he was sixteen to pursue racing, disappointing his dad badly.

  Dale told me his dad was tough on him. He wasn’t always patient or supportive. Ralph died of a heart attack in 1973, when Dale was twenty-two. The fact that he had dropped out of high school and let his dad down haunted Dale. I think it pushed him to prove himself early, which he got busy doing at the local short tracks.

  And Ralph’s boy, he could drive! Whether on dirt or asphalt, he would win.

  In his rookie NASCAR season of 1979, Dale won the race at Bristol, captured four poles, had eleven top-five finishes and seventeen in the top ten. He finished seventh in points despite missing four races because of a broken collarbone.

  When I said not to compare my rookie season to Dale’s, these numbers are the reason why. My stat columns were full of zeroes. No wins. No poles. No top fives. No top tens. In my defense, most rookies’ results look more like mine than Dale’s.

  But Dale was special. If he hadn’t gotten hurt in his rookie season, he would have been a contender for the championship. He proved that the next year. Right off the bat at Daytona, Dale won the Busch Clash, a special event for all the pole winners from the previous season. Then he took Atlanta, Bristol, Nashville, Martinsville, and Charlotte, winning his first of seven Winston Cup championships. Dale’s the only driver ever to follow up Rookie of the Year with the Cup championship.

  Although I was around from ’83 on and had met Dale’s glare eye-to-eye on the track, he and I didn’t speak much, if at all, until ’86. That was my rookie season in Cup and the year that Dale won his second championship.

  The championship banquet in those days was held in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel’s Grand Ballroom in New York City. NASCAR would invite all the drivers in the top twenty in points to join in honoring the championship team. I finished nineteenth in the standings that year and made my first trip to the Big Apple. And what did I do when I got to town? Went straight to my room and got room service. And watched TV. I had a lot to learn about that big city. The next night, Dale and his wife, Teresa, started a tradition that carried on for many years. They held a gathering for some of the race-car drivers and owners and their wives in their suite, the presidential suite. Drinks were served. And it sometimes turned into lots of drinks. There were hors d’oeuvres too. The champion had a lot of responsibilities during that week in New York. We all thought it was very gracious of Dale and Teresa to spend some time with Dale’s peers.

  And they did it in their hotel room, just like I had the night before. More or less.

  Dale was one of those people who seemed at home wherever he was, at the racetrack or in a fancy hotel suite. Just over six feet tall in his trademark Wrangler jeans, gargoyle sunglasses, and cowboy boots, no one pulled off the rough-and-tough look at the track better than Dale did. The first thing you’d notice was those sunglasses and his mustache. He looked like a cowboy who might ride bulls—or fight them. But drop him in New York City in a sport coat and loafers and Dale looked like he could run a corporate board meeting. And he could. He was a very smart man.

  At those parties in New York, we had a few pretty interesting conversations. The talk would mostly be racing stories, maybe about what had happened in the course of the season. But my favorite part was when Dale would tell stories about his dirt-track racing days. Wrecking. Winning. And fighting. Then having a few celebratory beers. They’d celebrate the wins. Both wins: the race and the fight. That seemed to be the usual order.

  The best way to describe Dale back then was plainspoken. Fifteen years and seven championships later, you’d still describe him the same way. Unadorned. Direct. Frank. Even if you barely knew him, you never had much doubt what Dale Earnhardt thought.

  Being with Dale in New York City was an education. Over the years, he taught me where to go for a fine dinner when I finally ventured out of the hotel. We got to hanging out more and more up there. In New York City, he was loose. But not at the track. There, he was the Intimidator. Everyone knew he was that way in the car. He was the same in the pit and around the garage. He always looked pissed off to me. I just steered clear of him. I knew he didn’t much like my brother back then, and whatever Darrell had done, I was pretty sure that made me guilty by association. They eventually got over their differences. Darrell even drove a few races for Dale.

  Over time, I learned that Dale had a quieter, gentler side. It would come out when we were fishing or spending time together with our families. The people who knew Dale best, a small group I would eventually become part of—we saw a far more complex person than the driver most fans were aware of, a man capable of doing just about anything.

  But it was the tough Dale—the death-defying Dale—that most people focused on. That was the one I first got to know.

  He picked up his nickname, the Intimidator, in 1987 after a battle with Bill Elliott near the end of the Winston, the high-stakes NASCAR All-Star race. Dale then became the “Man in Black” after GM Goodwrench became his sponsor and the #3 car got a fresh, fittingly intimidating black paint scheme.

  The nicknames certainly fit Dale’s driving style. He was aggressive, unwavering, and fearless—and maybe a little bit nuts. When he climbed behind the wheel of a race car, Dale didn’t think of death. He thought of winning. Looking back at some of Dale’s crashes, it’s hard to see how he got through as many of them as he did.

  Like in July 1996 in Talladega. He and Ernie Irvan got together, setting off a crazy crash that sent Dale head-on into the outside at two hundred miles an hour. Dale’s car flipped and slid through traffic across the track. His car was hit in the roof and on the windshield. It didn’t look like there was any way anyone could survive that. But Dale climbed right out of the car and waved at the crowd.

  In fact, he showed up the next week in Indianapolis and qualified his car. At the first pit stop, a broken collarbone forced him to hand off the wheel to Mike Skinner, one of his Richard Childress Racing teammates. The crash at Talladega didn’t bring him to tears. But handing off his car at Indy certainly did. Dale said: “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

  Then, in true Dale Earnhardt style, the next week he was back in the seat driving his car to the pole at Watkins Glen. That spawned a T-shirt fans bought by the thousands. On the shirt was a picture of Dale’s face. The caption read: “It Hurts So Good.”

  CHAPTER 9

  RACING ALONG

  Hurts so good. That describes racing a lot of the time. Something good happens, followed by something bad. Your emotions certainly get a workout.

  Nineteen eighty-eight was my third full season racing in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. For the first time in my career, I had a major sponsor, Country Time Lemonade. Things were progressing nicely in Cup with my team. We were running well. I grabbed my first top-five finish that year, a second place at Pocono, Pennsylvania, in July.

  But that turned out to be a tough day at the races. My finish was great. But on the first lap of the race, there was a major crash in turn two. NASCAR champion Bobby Allison was critically injured. They had to cut him out of his car and airlift him to the hospital. He had suffered a serious head injury. Bobby wasn’t just another racer on the track. He was my friend. Back in 1984, I had practiced and qualified his car for him in Milwaukee.

  Bobby raced short tracks all over the country, and sometimes I would go with him to race. So when the checkered flag flew that day in Pocono, I was celebrating my best career finish with my team. But then I found out about my friend and I was worried.

&nb
sp; Bobby recovered. But he was never able to race anything again.

  Emotional swings in racing are something every driver has to deal with. But it’s never easy. That’s a lesson I’ve been forced to learn over and over again.

  Our partnership with Country Time was going well. They were using our team to help them sell lots of lemonade. They wanted to expand their partnership with us in NASCAR. The Kroger 200 was a big Busch Series race that was held every August in Indianapolis. Kroger sponsored the race and sold Country Time Lemonade in their stores. So Country Time wanted a car in that race. I was going to get to do something I’d always wanted to do, which was race in the Busch Series.

  I’d skipped right over Busch at Richard Petty’s suggestion. I went straight from the Dash Series to Winston Cup. I really wanted my shot at running some Busch races. I believed I could beat those guys, and I thought it would be a lot of fun trying. And the truth was that I was missing Victory Lane. After all the winning I’d done getting to the Cup Series, I hadn’t won lately.

  Racing the Kroger 200 was indeed fun. I didn’t win that night, but I qualified fourth and ran competitively in my first Busch Series race. I ended up finishing twelfth.

  I wasn’t the only Cup driver who thought Busch was fun. Darrell had his own Busch Series team. That was kind of a hobby for him. He owned the car, and he had a sponsor. He did it on the side for fun, the way Dale Earnhardt and Bobby Allison and a lot of other guys back then liked to do. Not surprisingly, Darrell’s car had the best equipment money could buy. He had it all. I had always bugged DW about letting me drive his car for him, but he never would let me. My performance in Indy that night, I think, impressed him.

  A couple of weeks later, Darrell got a little banged up in a crash at Bristol, Tennessee. He was supposed to drive in the Busch race the next week in Darlington, South Carolina, but his shoulder and ribs were still a little too sore to race, he thought. And guess what? He asked me if I would drive for him.

  Well, it’s about damn time, I thought. That was a question I’d been waiting to hear forever—or at least since I was about twelve years old.

  “Heck, yeah,” I answered. “I’d love to. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever gonna ask.”

  It was a surprise, but it was going to be my second Busch Series start, and I couldn’t have been happier. Darrell had already qualified the car. I just had to get in and drive it. And drive it I did, all the way up to a third-place finish behind Harry Gant and Geoff Bodine. And I made that run all the way to the front without any practice. I just jumped in and went. Darrell had never given me an opportunity to drive his stuff before. But when I got the chance, I stepped up. Went out there and ran third for him, right behind two of NASCAR’s biggest stars. Not bad for a last-minute sub. One of the toughest tracks in NASCAR and I hadn’t put a scratch on the car.

  I was in a perfect position to bargain for more. The bargaining began as soon as I got out of Darrell’s car at Darlington that day. “We gotta do this again,” I told him. “Let me qualify and practice it next time, and I’ll win for you.”

  “Oh, you think so?” Darrell asked.

  “I know so.”

  “How do you like Dover, Little Bro?” Darrell asked. It was sounding like I was in.

  “I love Dover,” I said. “It’s actually my favorite track.” Or at least that’s what I said.

  Darrell then said, “Dover it is. You can drive for me there.”

  Every now and then, I get the answer I’m looking for. I went to Dover on a mission to prove to Darrell I was right.

  In Darlington, I’d been shocked that morning when he said, “Come drive my car.” But I’d been looking forward to this race for two weeks. And when we got to Dover and practice began, I was fast—and very confident I could win.

  I guess Darrell was hurting more at Darlington than he let on. He wasn’t really involved in race strategy or the talk over the radio between me and the crew. I didn’t hear but a few words from him down in South Carolina. But boy, he made up for it at Dover. The first voice I heard over the radio was DW’s, and he sounded like an announcer. “Mike, it’s DW up top—do you read me?”

  “Really well, boss,” I replied. “You seem extra loud, for some reason.”

  I started from the fifth position that day and moved forward from there. I was sitting second just past the three-quarter mark of the race. The caution had come out for an accident, and we were riding around while they cleaned up the track. My brother was on the radio a lot that day. It was getting late in the race, and evidently Darrell was getting nervous.

  What I heard over the radio next I’d never heard in a race car before. Darrell keyed his mic and calmly said: “This is what we got, little brother. There aren’t that many laps left. And you’re faster than that cat leadin’. You been faster than him all day. We gotta be patient though. We can make a silly mistake this late in the going. We gotta win this race.”

  He kept going on and on and on.

  “You’re the wild card,” Darrell continued. “These boys ain’t never raced with you before. These boys don’t know what you got up your sleeve. They’re gonna be a little leery of how you’re gonna attack ’em.”

  At this point, I began to think, “Will he ever shut up?”

  I felt as if my brother was channeling Vince Lombardi. I half expected him to say, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Or was that Knute Rockne? I can never remember. I just knew Darrell was getting on my nerves.

  After a solid two or three laps of this, he finally took his finger off the talk button. And I quickly pushed mine. What I said was, “What I really need now”—I was trying to be polite—“is for all of you to please be quiet. I know what I have to do, and I’m gonna do it.”

  And when the green flag flew for the run to the finish, I did it.

  I passed Tommy Ellis in the Goo Goo Clusters Buick and won my first NASCAR Busch Series race. My first win, my second ride in Darrell’s car in my third Busch Series start. One, two, three—just like that.

  Winning that day in my brother’s car was so satisfying after how long I’d waited for the opportunity to drive for him. We were standing in Victory Lane, me and Darrell, the guy I’d looked up to since I was a baby. He’d finally given me the chance. And we were holding a trophy together in, of all places, Delaware. We were spraying champagne. Actually, it was Busch beer. But it still felt great. Margaret and Leroy’s boys were in Victory Lane together.

  We never talked about him paying me. I was pretty sure if I’d have asked him, he would have said: “You should be paying me to drive my car.” He was kind of full of himself like that. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to race.

  The next morning I picked up the paper. It said I’d won something like $10,000. Wow, that’s a lot of money! I thought. You see, my car owner in Cup at that time was, let’s say, frugal—to put it mildly. I thought, I don’t know what he’ll give me, but I’ll bet it’s going to be a lot. A lot more than I usually get.

  I was wrong.

  Darrell mailed me a check for $1,000. And I thought my Cup car owner was tight!

  “Ten percent, Darrell?” I said to myself.

  One day I was joking around with Darrell and his crew guys. I told them he’d sent me a check for ten percent of the winnings at Dover.

  “Sounds like you’ve been reading the paper again, Mikey,” Darrell said. “Don’t do that. You can’t believe the money you read in the newspaper. They make that amount up so the win looks bigger. The owner never gets as much as the paper says.”

  “Whatever.” I shrugged. “Do I at least get the trophy? Or do I get a ten-percent replica of that?”

  Too bad we didn’t keep going. Due to sponsor conflicts, my Cup team wouldn’t allow me to race Darrell’s Busch car anymore. We had a deal with Mobil 1 oil, and Darrell’s car was sponsored by Exxon. But I definitely didn’t want to be done with Busch Series racing. I just had to find another ride.

  My Cup team began entering a Busc
h car for me occasionally, and I did well. I won on the anniversary of my first start at Indy. I took the checkered flag in the Kroger 200 driving my Country Time car. I also sat on the pole that night. That was a nice way to celebrate an anniversary.

  And I needed it. I was in Indy with a heavy heart. Emotionally, I was all over the place. Prior to the race that weekend, my mom had suffered a stroke back home in Kentucky. It was tough to stand in Victory Lane in Indianapolis and smile, knowing she was lying in a hospital bed in serious condition a few hours away. As soon as we got done in Victory Lane, Mercer and I hopped into my car and drove straight to Owensboro so I could be with Mom the next morning.

  I wanted to be there with my family.

  Mom’s condition was stable. I spent that whole week in Kentucky, and she improved daily. It was still serious though. It was hard, but as the week came to an end, I had to head back to the races. That’s what us racers do.

  CHAPTER 10

  GETTING FRIENDLY

  Back in North Carolina, I’d been spending more and more time around Dale.

  I would stop by the Busch Series shop behind his house in Mooresville. His guys would be working on the cars, and I’d hang out with them, just trying to be one of the boys. Dale’s Busch Series cars were the black #3 Goodwrench Chevys just like he raced in Cup on Sundays. The Busch Series cars were Dale’s though. He was the owner. And as an owner, he was very hands-on.

  Some of the time when I walked into his shop, I’d see Dale’s feet hanging out from underneath a car. He’d be installing a transmission or changing a gear or whatever he might be doing up under there. But when the work was done—that was my favorite part. We might have a beer or two and tell racing stories.