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Happy Tuesday! Today In Nascar History January 6, 1993: Carl Tyler, who started 12 Cup races in the late '50s, died on this day. His best finish was 11th in his second career start, at Wilson (N.C.) Speedway in March 1958. He started 10 races in 1958 and two in 1959. His final start came in the first Daytona 500. Tyler finished 54th in the field of 59. He completed 29 laps before his '57 Ford overheated. Number of the Day
We are counting down the days until the 51st running of the 2009 season-opening Daytona 500 on February 15. Each day we are highlighting a number that corresponds to the countdown number: 40: Victories for the No. 15 car in 1,137 Cup races. Tim Flock picked up the first win in 1957, and it wasn't until 1975 when the No. 15 returned to Victory Lane, with Buddy Baker. All four of Michael Waltrip's Cup wins have come in the No. 15, the most recent at Talladega in 2003. Drivers to win in the No. 15: Flock, Baker (5), Waltrip (4), Bobby Allison (14), Benny Parsons (3), Dale Earnhardt (3), Ricky Rudd (6), Geoff Bodine (3) and Morgan Shepherd. 40 Days and counting to the Daytona 500 Bits and Pieces Brendan Gaughan Joins Rusty Wallace Racing MOORESVILLE, NC—Rusty Wallace Racing announced Monday that former NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Rookie of the Year, Brendan Gaughan, will pilot the team’s No. 62 Chevrolet in a full-season bid for 2009 NASCAR Nationwide Series Raybestos Rookie of the Year honors. Gaughan assumes the ride—formerly the No. 64—driven by David Stremme and Max Papis to a top-ten finish in the 2008 standings. “My father has always been into numbers as well,” he added. “When we first came up with the number back in 2001, he loved to remind me that his lucky number has always been eight and that ‘six plus two equals eight’ he would always remind me as if I couldn’t figure that out. I also feel that the number is a tribute to Rusty. With all of his years running the No. 2 Miller Lite car, our replacing the four with a two—in the same style as his old number—makes it this an even bigger honor for me.” “I’ve known Brendan and his family for quite some time now and they’re all absolutely first-class people,” said RWR owner Rusty Wallace. “Brendan has shown that he has the talent to get the job done; I could see that back in 2004 when we were teammates at Penske. He’s a more mature and focused driver now than he’s ever been and we’re really looking forward to having him as a part of our team in 2009.” While the driver-owner dynamic is new, Gaughan’s move to RWR is not his first experience with Rusty Wallace. Gaughan was teammate to Wallace and the No. 2 team at Penske Racing in 2004, when Gaughan piloted Penske’s No. 77 in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. “In 2004, I had one of the greatest opportunities of my life, to race for Kodak and the Penske-Jasper team,” said Gaughan. “While there, I had the good fortune to be a teammate to one of my racing heroes, Rusty Wallace. Although we struggled, Rusty was always there trying to help our No. 77 team. Whether it was allowing me to drive his No. 2 Miller Lite car in our first test together at Rockingham, or his testing my No. 77 car at Indianapolis, he was always there trying to help us improve.” In making his move to RWR and its No. 62 Chevrolet, Gaughan leaves his 2008 Truck Series seat with Circle Bar Racing and its No. 10 team. In 2008, Gaughan had two top-5 and five top-10 finishes. In addition to its driver and sponsor announcements, RWR also announced several other key personnel moves: • Former No. 64 crew chief, Dale Ferguson, will move to the team’s No. 66 entry and third-generation driver Steve Wallace, for 2009. Ferguson led RWR’s No. 64 team and driver David Stremme, to 16 top-ten finishes in 2008, en route to a top-ten finish in the final owners’ standings. TLC to air NASCAR Wives By James Hibberd LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter)–TLC is gearing up a new reality show tracking the spouses of NASCAR drivers. The cable network has ordered a series titled “NASCAR Wives,” starring women with surnames familiar to racing fans. TLC will air an hour of the series as a special Jan. 24 with a lead-in from the network’s most-watched annual event, the Miss America pageant. A full season, including an undisclosed number of episodes, will follow in the spring. The concept mixes racing with the “wives genre” peppering cable primetime, from Lifetime’s drama “Army Wives” to Bravo’s reality show “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” Participants include DeLana Harvick (wife of Kevin, who has 11 career Sprint Cup Series wins), Shana Mayfield (wife of Jeremy, a 15-year Sprint Cup veteran), Kelley Earnhardt (sister of Dale Earnhardt Jr. [and wife of No. 82 Red Bull Racing crew chief Jimmy Elledge]) and Angie Skinner (wife of Mike, who competes in NASCAR’s top three national series [mainly the Truck Series]). The series is produced by NASCAR Media Group for TLC. Hall of Fame Racing done? hearing from many sources that Hall of Fame Racing, which ran many drivers in the #96 Toyota in 2008, is selling off cars and equipment and most of the work force has been laid off and is not expected to start the season, if run at all. Top-30 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers Kurt Busch, 18th Rea White/scenedaily.com Kurt Busch certainly must have felt that good things were on the horizon after pushing Penske Racing teammate Ryan Newman to victory in the season-opening Daytona 500, but things didn’t work out. Busch, 30, won once when a gamble on a rain-shortened race paid off, but other than that he didn’t perform up to his usual standard. The Las Vegas-native earned 10 top-10 finishes and $5.1 million in purses. Sporting News’ 60 Most Beautiful People No. 40, Sara Peters Rebecca Rudolph/scenedaily.com In 60 years of NASCAR racing, the sport has been filled with colorful characters. This year, Sporting News decided to craft a list of the sport's 60 Most Beautiful People. The selections were made as a result of nominations sent in by readers and NASCAR fans to the Sporting News' publications and Web sites. The list was finalized and published in a special edition, which is now available on newsstands and at the online store at streetandsmiths.com. SceneDaily is running the list, with one person from the top 60 to be featured each day. Today's installment features No. 40, Sara Peters. Imagine four Labrador Retrievers - big, lovable dogs - and one woman deep in the mud. Meet Sara Peters. The hard-working wife of driver Timothy Peters loves her dogs. She and Tim own two Labradors and recently rescued two additional Labs that were being poorly treated. “I’m out there in Tim’s steel-toed boots in the mud when it’s raining, taking care of the dogs,‚”she says. “Now, that’s my full-time job.” Fortunately for Peters, it doesn’t rain every day. She also runs her own jewelry business, a venture she operates from home that gives her time to be with her husband at the track. “I travel with him to 95 percent of the races,” she says. “I’m there for the details, to take the responsibility away from (Tim) so he can focus on the race.” Peters helps out by going to the grocery store and preparing meals for Timothy’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team while they’re at the track as well as helping him get ready for his race. “My main job is to try to keep his stress level down as much as possible,” Peters says. “It’s a very stressful sport and a stressful career, and he stresses and worries about everything.” Daytona means everything to these drivers by Larry McReynolds/foxsports.com Well folks, 2009 has arrived — meaning we are just a few weeks away from heading down to Daytona Beach, Fla., and kicking off a brand new season once again. Usually, this is when my inbox gets flooded by fans — both NASCAR and of the stick-and-ball variety — asking me why we talk so much about the first race of a 36-race schedule. The answer is simple: The Daytona 500 is the most prestigious of all the NASCAR races we run. It always has been and I see it always being that way. When you look at other sports, the most important event for them is the last event — whether it is the Super Bowl, the Final Four, the World Series, Stanley Cup playoffs, etc, it always is at the end of their season. Well our sport is a little different because our biggest and most prestigious race of the year is the first one of the season. It's the one that every driver wants to win at least once in their career. Aside from the prestige of the event, I think the most important thing, with our season that runs from February to November and being so long and so drawn-out, is that coming out of Daytona with a good start. It's like it almost sets the tone for the next several weeks. The contradiction to that was last year with Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch. They finished 1-2, but after that you couldn't have had a more dismal season. The flip-side to that was the No. 48 car. Jimmie Johnson didn't come out of Daytona very good, but ended up as our champion by the time Homestead in November rolled around. Remember, it's a virtual Who's Who that have won the Daytona 500 while at the same time it's a virtual Who's Who that hasn't. The Daytona 500 means so much to our sport and these drivers and teams. Every Indy car driver wants to win the Indianapolis 500. Every Formula One driver wants to win at Monaco. Every NASCAR driver wants to win the Daytona 500. I have to tell you, folks, when you drive through that tunnel for the first time in February you get that spine-tingling feeling and you say to yourself, "This is it — it's Daytona and it's a new season." The other thing that none of lose sight of is that at the end of a week and a half down there, we will all know who the new Daytona 500 champion will be. As the winner of the race, you also know that you will spend the night and your car will be put into the Daytona Experience on Monday morning and will remain there for a year. As I tell people all the time, when you win the Daytona 500, it stays with you the rest of your life. Even today, 17 years after the first one I won as a crew chief and 11 years after the second, whenever I do an appearance or speech, I am always introduced as a two-time Daytona 500 winning crew chief. In both cases there was so much going on, first from the longest Victory Lane party you can image, to trying to get your car through post-race inspection, to being run from suite to suite to suite, that even though the race was over about 5 p.m., I didn't get back to my motorcoach until after 11:30 p.m. It was then that it really finally sank in what we had accomplished. I distinctly remember in 1992, I drove home Monday with my wife and two kids and it wasn't until we were up there on the highway rolling north to Charlotte that it actually sank in for me what Davey and I and the team had accomplished the day before. Not a hmmm-'Dinger I am probably not surprised that AJ Allmendinger is going to go race for Gillett-Evernham Motorsports, but I do have to admit being surprised at the fact that he replaced Elliott Sadler. I love Elliott to death. He is one of my buddies that I work with on the Speed broadcasts. I consider him a friend but obviously he has been over there for a few years and the performance just hasn't been there for whatever reason. Elliott hasn't forgotten how to drive a race car, but after several crew chief changes, for whatever reasons the results just never materialized. They just didn't have a lot of success, so I am surprised in some ways of the parting but not surprised when I sit back and analyze it. The other thing is, if you look at it, other than Kasey Kahne's short run there in late May early June, no one ran well at Gillett-Evernham. So is changing Elliott Sadler in the No. 19 car the answer? I am just not so sure yet. Tough times I also hate it so much for the men and women in our industry over the last few months that have lost their jobs. I count my blessings every day of how fortunate that I have been throughout my career in NASCAR. With that being said, I also don't ever take anything for granted. Regardless of my contract with FOX Sports, Speed Channel or TNT, I always know I have to go out and do the best job I can every single broadcast. I don't just take it for granted. There's never a good time to get laid off but for these folks to lose their jobs right before the holidays is especially brutal. At the same time, it's like our sport needed a wake up call. Things had slowly but surely been getting out of control and out of hand. It's nobody's fault, it was just the growing of the sport. To know that the budget for a Sprint Cup team has doubled in the last five or six years is ridiculous. To know that salaries for drivers, crew chiefs and crew members have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in the last five or six years, well, our sport can't stand that. So it's almost like we needed a wake up call, but I hate it for those that have been affected. Regardless of the overall economic situation surrounding our sport, it seemed inevitable that we were going to hit the wall sooner or later. Hope for 2009 The biggest thing I am looking forward to in 2009, regardless of the testing policy, a lot more teams have a better understanding of this new car than ever before. Now we have a full season under our belt at all the tracks. Heading into last year, we had a lot of unknowns as to how the car would react at most of the tracks. That has been eliminated and that has me excited because I think we will see even better racing in NASCAR than ever before. Driver Review Ryan Newman Bryan Davis Keith · Frontstretch.com 2008 Ride: No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge Stats: 36 Races, 1 Win, 2 Top 5s, 8 Top 10s, 1 Pole, 17th in points. High Point: The No. 12 team rode the momentum of a strong close to the 2007 season right into Daytona Speedweeks. Racing with former Busch Series crew chief Roy McCauley for the first time at the Cup level, Newman and his No. 12 team had a stellar run in the Gatorade Duels, earning the seventh starting spot for the Daytona 500. That Sunday, Newman and crew ran up front all race long, hooking up with Tony Stewart on a late-race restart that moved the No. 12 car into the second position. On the final lap, coming out of Turn 2, Newman lagged behind Stewart’s Toyota, allowing teammate Kurt Busch to give him “the push from heaven” that sent Newman’s No. 12 Dodge to Victory Lane for the first time since 2005. The
win was Penske Racing’s first Daytona triumph, first restrictor plate victory, and first ever one-two finish. Low Point: After coming within a lap of winning the series’ next plate race at Talladega before fading to eighth, the No. 12 team had a return to Daytona circled as the race to turn their season around. Coming into the event, Newman had scored only one Top 10 finish in the last seven weeks, putting his Chase hopes on little more than life support. Unfortunately, Daytona didn’t offer the resuscitation needed the second time around. Early on, Newman was spun out by Jamie McMurray on Lap 45, sending him to the back of the pack and fighting for survival. Keeping his cool, he successfully battled back into the Top 10, running seventh by Lap 125… only to have David Gilliland get loose and slam the No. 12 Dodge into
the Turn 4 wall. The team fixed the car a second time, and within the next 10 laps, got Newman back into the Top 15… only to have Martin Truex, Jr. spin Denny Hamlin’s Toyota right into the nose of his car. So, three incidents — none of which were Newman’s making — left him with a wrecked car and a 36th place finish at one of his team’s strongest tracks. And dropping 185 points behind 12th with eight races left in the regular season effectively ended this driver’s playoff chances. Summary: In like a lion, out like a lamb was perhaps the best way to describe Ryan Newman’s season. In the first four weeks, Newman scored his first Cup victory since Loudon in September of 2005, then followed that up by posting three consecutive Top 15s on intermediate ovals that had long been the No. 12 team’s Achilles’ heel. Unfortunately, a wreck at Bristol and a handling nightmare at Martinsville exposed very real shortcomings in the team’s once-vaunted short track program. As others managed to make gains on the CoT, Newman and Penske Racing had fallen behind, showing none of the competitiveness that they did in those same races in 2007. The team’s struggles were accentuated in the summer with the announcement that Newman would be leaving Penske for Stewart-Haas Racing’s No. 39 car. Relegated to lame-duck status, Newman and the No. 12 cracked the Top 10 only once in the season’s final 12 races, missing the Chase by a mile and settling for 17th in the final standings despite their Daytona victory. Penske Racing’s engine department woes also resurfaced in the Fall, with Newman suffering DNFs at Loudon and Talladega due to motor failure. 2009 Outlook: When Newman arrives at Daytona for Speedweeks in 2009, it will be the first time in his NASCAR career that he is not driving for Penske Racing. And the change could not have come at a better time. Saddled with an affiliation with the ever-struggling Dodge Motorsports program, an unreliable engine department, and a seeming inability to solve its handling woes on longer ovals, Penske Racing does not look to be getting more competitive on the race track anytime soon. Stewart-Haas Racing, on the other hand, is looking at nothing but an upswing for 2009. Hendrick engines and support will give Newman the most reliable race cars he’s had in his career. Plus, one can’t forget the millions that Chevrolet paid to bring Newman’s teammate, Tony Stewart, back into the bowtie brigade. They didn’t drop all that cash to see SHR running midpack — so expect the resources will be there immediately for this new team. But that’s not to say Newman fans should be expecting instant success for the Rocketman at SHR. Despite the benefits of having durable Hendrick horsepower and equipment underneath him, the fact does remain that Newman is driving for a renovated team with a new crew chief and teammate. Though they’ll likely be a force on plate tracks (a second consecutive Daytona 500 trophy is not out of the question), 2009 will likely be a year of battling for Top 20 finishes and accumulating a good notebook for the renumbered No. 39 car. The Chase is likely out of the question this season, too; but if all goes well, 2010 should be all systems go for Newman to make a long overdue push for a Cup title. 2006 Frontstretch.com Grade: D. Driver Review Juan Pablo Montoya Toni Montgomery · Frontstretch.com
2008 Ride: No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Dodge Stats: 36 Races, 0 Wins, 2 Top 5s, 3 Top 10s, 0 Poles, 25th in Points. High Point: As the statistics show, 2008 was a pretty dismal year for Montoya — as it was for the entire Chip Ganassi Racing organization. That’s not to say there weren’t some bright spots, though … even if they were hard to come by. One of the brightest had to be a second place finish for the Colombian in the Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway in April. Montoya claims to like restrictor plate racing, but this is by far his best result on one of the high speed tracks so far… and it wasn’t a fluke. Montoya, along with one-time teammate David Stremme, ran in and around the Top 10 all day, proving that for at least that one weekend, the team was flashing some of its old form. While Stremme got shuffled
back and caught up in a wreck late, Montoya made all the right moves and pushed race winner Kyle Busch to the finish line, scoring one of only two Top 5s on the season for himself in the process. To put just how good of a day it was in perspective, the only other Top 10 finishes Montoya scored in 2008 came at Watkins Glen and Infineon — the two road courses where he’s always been competitive even when Ganassi hasn’t. And the fact it occurred just one week after switching crew chiefs — from longtime head wrench Donnie Wingo to former No. 41 leader Jimmy Elledge — was icing on the cake. Low Point: So many to choose from in this category … but the lowest point of 2008 for Montoya was probably the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway this November. The sophomore had a really good car and was running in the Top 10 the entire race — that is, up until lap 264 when David Gilliland decided he didn’t like Montoya’s driving style and punted him into the outside wall. To add insult to injury, Gilliland was not running on the lead lap when the incident occurred, bringing up the question of why a lapped car would run one on the lead lap so hard in the first place. Montoya wasn’t completely innocent, though. He admitted that he had nudged Gilliland before the crash because Gilliland had slipped up the
track and, in his opinion, crowded him into the wall. Gilliland claims he only meant to nudge Montoya as well, but the result of his nudge was a car for the No. 42 team that was unable to continue in the race and wound up finishing 43rd — the lowlight of a dismal Chase which included five DNFs in the final ten races for wrecks. Summary: Ganassi Racing has been in a backslide for the last several years, and 2008 was not a year that saw that trend change. Between sponsorship issues affecting his teammates and personnel changes on his own crew — including three different crew chiefs in one month — this was quite a challenging season for Montoya. It was also just his second season in NASCAR so perhaps one might be tempted to consider the sophomore slump part of the equation too. But whatever the reason, he failed to live up to higher expectations after winning a race and capturing top rookie honors in 2007. Team Ranking: Montoya and the No. 42 are the flagship team at Chip Ganassi Racing; but for 2009, there are some changes. Ganassi has merged with DEI to form Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, and that brings up some questions as to whether Montoya or new teammate Martin Truex, Jr. will be top dog in the four-car operation. Off-Track News: When Montoya left Formula 1 for NASCAR, there were some who thought the real reason was because he didn’t have any prospects for a ride there for 2007. Montoya claimed it was because he wanted a new challenge, and he found NASCAR intriguing — end of story. Well, perhaps fans got a good idea of which answer was closer to the truth in 2008. Montoya had an offer from Toro Rosso (that’s Red Bull in Italian and is the name used to denote the Formula 1 branch of the operation’s second squad) to run their car next season but he declined, preferring to stay in NASCAR instead. Granted, it was the team’s second-tier squad, but Toro
Rosso scored a victory in 2008 with driver Sebastian Vettel. Given the rough ride in NASCAR in 2008, doesn’t one have to wonder if there wasn’t some little bit of temptation? 2009 Outlook: In all honesty, who knows what to expect from Montoya’s team? At first glance, there is reason for optimism with the DEI merger. DEI probably had better engines, something that will likely benefit Montoya because a manufacturer switch means those are the engines they will continue to use. Chevrolet posts better results than Dodge, as well, so the change may also bring better equipment. On the other side of the coin, DEI and Ganassi both struggled last year with performance and sponsorship in their own right — none of their six full-time cars made the Chase. So, can two struggling organizations throw in together, pool what resources they do have, and be better for it — or does it just become one giant mess? We’ll have to wait and see. Quote Of The Year: “I’ve loved restrictor-plate racing since the first time I came to Talladega,” Montoya said in April. “The bumping, it’s tough. You can finish 20th in a heartbeat — or 30th. It’s pretty exciting because it takes a lot of strategy, and you always have to pick the right lane. I really helped [winner] Kyle [Busch]. I managed to get on his bumper, and when you can get on somebody’s bumper you can actually push them all the way around the corner. I made up a bunch of ground and it was good, and I got up to second and then dropped to fifth and got up to second again. It was a pretty cool, interesting race.” 2007 Frontstretch.com Grade: C. Driver Review Joe Nemechek Matt Taliaferro · Frontstretch.com
2008 Ride: No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Chevrolet Stats: 32 Races, 0 Wins, 0 Top 5s, 0 Top 10s, 1 Pole, 37th in points. High Point: The highlights were far and few between for the 45-year-old Nemechek in 2008. Driving for Furniture Row Racing, a third-year, single-car outfit based in Denver, Colo., it was tough to compete with the multi-car giants at most races on the schedule. However, Nemechek and crew were able to take advantage of its Hendrick powerplants at the restrictor plate tracks of Daytona and Talladega. Nemechek grabbed the pole for the Aaron’s 499 at Talladega in April; he went on to finish 25th in the event, which was his highest finish of the season to that point. Nemechek topped himself at Daytona in July, finishing 18th in the midsummer classic before capping the plate races with an impressive 11th-place run at Talladega in October after qualifying seventh. That showing wound up being his best of the 2008 season. Low Point: There were a few for the underfunded organization — but the bottom fell completely out as the season wound down. Following his 11th at Talladega, and despite being under the startling realization of how adversely the economic woes were to affect the team in the coming months, FRR averaged a 39.1-place finish in the season’s final six races, even failing to qualify for the penultimate event of 2008 at Phoenix. Summary: The 2008 season began with a ray of hope for Furniture Row Racing and Joe Nemechek — although that can be said for any team in any season. A second FRR car, the No. 87 piloted by Kenny Wallace, made the field for the Daytona 500, and plans were for the organization to run the machine in as many races as possible — sponsorship depending. However, the 500 was the first and last race for Nemechek’s teammate, as funding did not allow for any further attempts. Nemechek himself got off to a rocky start, finishing 41st and 34th in the season’s first two events. He failed to live up to the “Front Row Joe” moniker from there, failing to qualify for three of the year’s first 12 races to keep his car outside the Top 35 in owner points. Digging a hole the team could never quite get out of, Nemechek and team limped into Daytona in July and came away with the aforementioned 18th-place showing, a brief respite from what was a difficult first half. Unfortunately, the second wasn’t any better. A string of 11 races between Daytona and Talladega did little to boost the team’s spirits, as they were only able to conjure up two 29th-place showings as highlights. The wreck-filled October Talladega race produced a surprise 11th-place run, and that, for all intents and purposes, was the last most would see out of the No. 78 — the season spiraled out of control from there. Off-Track News: In mid-November, team owner Barney Visser announced that Furniture Row Racing would scale down to a partial schedule in 2009, and that Nemechek would be released of his driving duties at the conclusion of the ’08 season. In what appeared to be an amicable split, Nemechek was freed from his contract that would have kept him in Colorado through the 2010 season. “Just like the reduced schedule announcement, this buyout of Joe’s contract has nothing to do with his on-track performance,” Team President Joe Garone said. “But our contract with Joe for 2009 was for a full schedule and we’re not able to fulfill that part of the deal. Joe has been a great leader, mentor, and driver for Furniture Row Racing — this move is doing what is best for both Joe and our team. It doesn’t require us to have him drive for Furniture Row in 2009, but it doesn’t restrict him from doing what he loves — and that’s racing at the highest level every week of the season.” 2009 Outlook: Unfortunately for Nemechek, a seat in the Cup Series in the upcoming season does not appear to be likely. With teams scaling back operations due to a lack of funding, the amount of seats available to a 40-something driver with zero Cup wins in the last four years are virtually non-existent. Of course, Nemechek has been in this position before — and has landed on his feet each time. However, there’s still no word on any plans for the 1992 Busch Series champion to even jump into a Nationwide car or Camping World Truck — surprising, since Nemechek still has his own Nationwide operation, racing in it sporadically over the last several years. As for Furniture Row Racing, the team is tentatively set to run a 12-race schedule in 2009 with ’08 Rookie of the Year Regan Smith behind the wheel. Quote of the Year: “It’s just strange how there’s a lot of stuff going on in the garage right now, but not a lot of people swapping teams. [It’s] just a tough time. You get to the end of the year and [to] all of a sudden [have to] start looking for a ride is pretty tough. There are a lot of things going on in the Nationwide Series, the Trucks. Who knows? I’ll do something.” “Even if it’s part-time in all of them, I’m going to do a lot.” — Joe Nemechek, commenting on an uncertain future at Homestead in November. 2006 Frontstretch.com Grade: D.
Remembering Dale – One Tough Customer JimMcCoy/bumpdrafts.com (Once again we credit the CMT film documentary Dale for the inspiration.) Before we go on, ya gotta listen to “Hard Workin’ Man” by Brook & Dunn, one of Dale Earnhardt’s favorite artists to get you in the mood for this post. With his bushy hair, bushy mustache and his dirty tee shirts, everything about Dale Earnhardt had a hard, lean hungry look about it early in his career. The earliest stages of his career may have been a bit elongated, like the straightaways at Daytona, but once he got going, the distance from Cup debut to Cup champion went quicker than a lap at Bristol. Earnhardt is considered to be a part of the rookie class of 1979, though he debuted in 1975. Just one season after winning “Rookie Of The Year” honors- the “Man In Black’ captured a title in 1980. Some would say the 29-year-old son of a dirt track racer wasn’t ready for prime time. He lacked polish, he lacked education and his father Ralph wasn’t known for being articulate either. It would take Dale Earnhardt time master the trappings of fame, but Wranglers executive Jack Watson said he knew his company was on to something when they elected to sponsor the raw North Carolinian. He had a swagger, a certain cowboy confidence that seemed to suggest “I may not be one of the greats now, but I will be.” The campaign Wrangler came up with was “One Tough Customer.” It was a stroke of marketing genius. Earnhardt proved time and again he had grit in his gut, vinegar in his veins and a heart bigger than Talladega. If you watched the races or even had just seen the footage on YouTube, then you know traded paint with danger more than once, and then got in it’s face in Rocky Balboa-like fashion, declaring “You’re not so bad!” Pocono, 1982- A reader named Glenn dropped me a line today to remind me that Tim Richmond was another driver with whom Dale Earnhardt shared a hotly contested rivalry. According to a post-accident T.V. interview, Richmond said Dale told him that he’d been having trouble with his brakes that day, pumping them to make them work. The #2 passed the #15 Wrangler car when Earnhardt caught him in the turn. The two spun wildly, sending the “15″ up to the wall and it flipped on its roof. For a moment, it looked like Dale’s car might flip over the wall. He stayed on the track, oil leaking everywhere. One photo shows Earnhardt climbing out of his car with eyes as big as saucers. Richmond got the better of the exchange and helped his rival off the track to board an ambulance. In the interview, Richmond didn’t seem to think “The Intimidator” had much more than a “charlie horse.” In an interview for the movie Dale, Watson (the aforementioned Wrangler executive) got a call from someone on the team and he said the leg was broken. Everyone was sworn to secrecy on the injury because Earnhardt feared getting parked by NASCAR. They apparently never learned, because he raced the next week. Whatever shortcomings he had as a pitch man were more than made up for by the fact that with Dale Earnhardt, one tough customer wasn’t a slogan, it’s who he was. Richmond, 1986- This “Dale versus Darrell” epitomized one of NASCAR’s fiercest rivalries. If you saw the race, you saw two men fighting over track position like two starving hounds fight for a bone. Waltrip kept trying to take the lead from Earnhardt, rubbing him a few times, but Earnhardt kept shutting the door. D.W. said he’d loosen his old friend up, thinking he had, and the “3″ would slam the door shut. Waltrip finally got position, when Earnhardt came up and hooked the “Bud Machine.” The collision also collected Joe Ruttman and Geoff Bodine. The wild spinout made Waltrip’s car look like a crushed can. Earnhardt got crumpled up pretty well on the front end. The collision had two effects: it solidified Earnhardt’s reputation (if you’ll pardon my French) as a “badass”- someone you’d get plate full of if you elected to fire or return fire. It also had the effect of chilling over relations between the two for quite some time- though they would make amends years later with Waltrip driving a partial schedule for Dale Earnhardt Inc. in place of an injured Steve Park in 1998. Talladega, 1996- This was easily the scariest crash Earnhardt ever walked away from. Earnhardt was running out front when Sterling Marlin got into him due to contact from Ernie Irvan. The hit got the “3″ into a spin, sending him hard into the wall. He and Marlin made further contact and Robert Pressley also got collected. Derrike Cope also tagged the black Chevy. Just the sheer speed and meeting between a rapidly moving car and an immobile, unforgiving wall made the incident look downright dramatic and frightening. You want one tough customer? Get this: Earnhardt, clutching his broken shoulder, walked to the ambulance. The injuries busted him up bad enough, he started the next race for points, but let a substitute finish it out. In later interviews, Earnhardt let it be known the accident got his attention. “It hit close to home.” Daytona, 1997- No one would have blamed Earnhardt if he felt cursed with Daytona. In his 19th attempt at a Cup win at Daytona, The Intimidator got into a little hard racing with young Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt told reporter Ralph Shaheen he thought Jeff was getting a little impatient. According to “Big E” Gordon got under him, his car pushed off the corner, got into the wall, got back at Gordon, when Earnhardt got hit from behind by Dale Jarrett, though in ESPN Sports Center Kenny Mayne said there was no contact. I’ll go with what the guy in the car said. While the wrecked Chevy did a wild dance on the track, no further race casualties were incurred. The amazing part was, Earnhardt saw that he still had wheels on the car while boarding the ambulance. Earnhardt stopped everything, went to the truck that had his car, and he had them try to crank the engine. It started. Earnhardt had the damage repaired and he finished the race. Apparently his cars were tough customers too. The 2001 Daytona crash is an altogether different story and we’ll save the one Dale didn’t walk away from for another day. The point here, is that all these incidents, along with his brilliant, if not dangerous passing maneuvers had us believing Earnhardt could walk away from anything. Considering the evidence of these stories and more- its safe to say Dale Earnhardt came by the nickname “Ironhead” honestly. NASCAR ON TV THIS WEEK
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