In the Blink of an Eye

by Michael Waltrip

  “A young hero named Michael Waltrip and his four hundred and sixty-third start,” Squier said, getting downright poetic here and quoting me. “He once said, ‘No one owes me anything in this sport. I’ve been close, I’ve been competitive, so I am proud of these things. I love driving these cars and I want to do it for a long time to come.’ The voice of a hero.

  “The interesting thing is,” Ken went on, finally wrapping up, “these heroes are not only today. They are heading for Rockingham next week and Las Vegas the week after. That is the mark of a true race and a true hero.”

  Dale was in an ambulance, taking a slow ride to the hospital. I was still in Victory Lane, wondering when he would come see me. The viewers were left hanging, unsure of how these two stories would eventually connect.

  And with that Fox signed off from Daytona.

  CHAPTER 25

  BAD HINTS

  Of course, I hadn’t seen any of the TV coverage. I was still blissfully clueless. Although Dale hadn’t gotten to Victory Lane yet, I knew he must be on his way.

  I had it all figured out.

  I guessed he got a piece of that last-lap wreck and was being checked out at the Infield Care Center. I could not wait until he got there and joined our celebration. He had to be so proud.

  I mean, this win was more his than it was mine. He was why this all happened. He saw it happening way before I did, way before anyone did. He believed I could win all along, even before he hired me. He coached me all winter, and he directed the preparation of my #15 cars. Then, that meeting Friday. Wow! He called it! He called it and we did it!

  I had it all pictured in my mind, him walking up with that mischievous grin all over his face that seemed to say, “Hey, I told you so. Hell, I told everyone so.”

  I wanted a hug, too. One like he had given Dale Junior when Junior won the All-Star Race in 2000. That was one of those moments that made me cry. And I wasn’t even there when it happened. I’d just seen it on TV. But I knew how much it meant to the two of them.

  I knew Dale, and I knew joy when I saw it, and that moment in Victory Lane with his son was joyous. I was about to receive that same type of approval, the I-knew-you-would-win-for-me validation I desperately needed. So as all the accolades of winning the Daytona 500 were being showered on me I kept wondering, Where’s Dale?

  I kept glancing at the entrance of Victory Lane. I was sure that any moment Big E was going to walk through there and give me what I wanted more than a trophy or a check. He was going to walk in there, start slapping everybody on the back, and say, “This is why all of you are on my team. I knew all of you were winners.”

  While the photographers took pictures and I smiled, I wondered: So what’s taking Dale so long to get here?

  He probably stopped to see Dale Junior. Junior did just finish second in the Daytona 500. Dale Earnhardt, the seven-time Cup Series champion driver, now could add owner of the first- and second-place finishers, a one-two finish, in the Daytona 500, to his impressive résumé. A lot of reporters probably wanted to talk to him about that.

  Meanwhile, I was still doing interviews, posing for pictures, swapping hats, all the stuff I’d watched other people do for the past sixteen years, and I was loving every minute of it. It was my time to shine, and my smile was bigger than it had ever been. This scene would be complete as soon as Dale showed up.

  I hope Dale Junior comes with him too, I was thinking. The three of us did this together. What could be better than the three of us being together in Victory Lane?

  Man, where were they?

  Heck, when I won the All-Star race, Dale was one of the first people to Victory Lane to congratulate me. He even beat my brother there. And Dale was only partly responsible for that win. He just put me and Wood Brothers together. He set it up. But we had to do the rest on our own. But not today. He put me in his car. He told me how we were going to win the race. And on the track, he made sure it all went down just like he said.

  Between looking for Dale, I was still living in the hectic pace of Victory Lane. “Smile here, Mike.” “Smile there, Mike.” “Talk to Fox Dallas, Mike.” “Talk to the local Fox affiliate, Mike.”

  But still no Dale.

  I was beginning to grow a bit frustrated. I asked Buffy, Ty, and a couple of crew guys to find out where Dale was and why he wasn’t there yet. They all told me similar things. “He’s on his way. . . . He’ll be here in a minute.” And I bought that. Maybe Dale was giving me time to enjoy win number one with my new team. But that didn’t make any sense. This was his new team too. I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t there.

  It seemed like he would have had plenty of time to be checked out at the track hospital, then stop to congratulate Dale Junior and make it here by now. But I just kept trying to justify why he wasn’t there yet. I knew every reporter in Daytona would like to hear an answer from maybe the greatest NASCAR racer ever, winner of the 1998 Daytona 500 and some seventy other races: “How did you take a guy who had gone 0 for 462, put him behind the wheel, and have him go one for one? How did you do that, Dale? How’s that possible?”

  And I wanted to ask Dale the same thing. “How did you do that?” Clearly, it wasn’t just an accident. You did it. “You planned it, and you made it happen today.”

  Finally, somebody I knew turned up.

  It was Kenny Schrader. He’d been out there in the middle of all that mess with me. And now, I assumed, he came to say congratulations. When I saw Schrader coming toward me, I thought of my first win with the team I started behind my house. I beat him in a NASCAR West race in Colorado. We battled door to door, and I pulled away at the end. When I got to the airport that night, he’d written a note and stuck it on my plane.

  “You are a wiener!” he wrote. “Congratulations, friend.”

  Kenny and I were buddies, and it was great to see him walking into Victory Lane. I had a trophy in my hand, confetti on my head, and a can-you-believe-this look on my face.

  I said, “Schrader, look. I won the Daytona 500.”

  But this Kenny Schrader I was looking at, he didn’t look right. And he wasn’t acting right either. Certainly not the way I had expected him to. He should have been smiling, I thought. He must have been having trouble putting the moment into words.

  “I know this is a bit of an upset,” I joked. “But is it really that shocking that I actually won a race? You’re speechless?”

  Then he reached out and grabbed me, squeezing both my arms below my elbows. I didn’t understand what he was doing. He didn’t say a word. But I could tell he was upset.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Kenny had his M&M’s hat pulled way down over his eyes and giant sunglasses covering most of his face. This wasn’t a familiar Schrader look to me. It was like he was hiding behind a mask. And the way he grabbed my arms was confusing to me.

  Then, speaking softly, Kenny said three words I’ll never forget.

  “It’s not good.”

  Kenny and I had a great relationship. We kidded each other all the time. Mainly he kidded me about not winning a race. But I knew he loved me, and it didn’t bother me coming from him.

  Again, he said, “It’s not good. I think Dale’s hurt.”

  His voice was shaking. He’d seen Dale in the car. “He’s really hurt,” Kenny said. He was being my friend, and he wanted me to be prepared for what I would learn next.

  Schrader hugged me and said: “I love you, bud”—and then he walked off.

  I know it took a lot of courage for Kenny to come and tell me that. It had to be hard. And think about what he was going through: He was racing to win the Daytona 500 on the last lap. I’m sure he could taste victory too. Then he was swept up in a wreck. When his car stopped, he was hurting, but he struggled out and saw Dale’s car next to his and went to check on him.

  Dale and Kenny were good friends too. Dale had helped Kenny get his feet under him when he moved to North Carolina back in the eighties to chase his racing dreams. Dale had helped Kenny t
he way Richard Petty had helped me. Dale gave Kenny advice and direction. Before you knew it, Schrader, a dirt racer from Missouri, was rubbing fenders with Dale in NASCAR. In 1984, Kenny was Rookie of the Year.

  So Kenny was going over to help a friend out of his wrecked race car, something we’d all done before. He expected when he got there and dropped Dale’s window net that they’d laugh about who won the race and all the crazy stuff that had gone on. I’m sure Kenny thought he’d lean in and lighten up the moment. He certainly didn’t think he would lean in and see what he saw.

  What he saw was Dale lying there, slumped over, unconscious. It knocked Kenny back. And he quickly started waving his arm, desperately calling for medical help.

  All this was happening as I drove by heading to Victory Lane. As I was standing in Victory Lane, selfishly wanting Dale to come tell me what a great job I’d done, he was probably already dead. And the guy who got there first was Kenny. Now he was the first again, the first who tried to prepare me for how serious Dale’s wreck really was.

  It was becoming obvious this wasn’t about me anymore. All that mattered now was Dale and his accident. I didn’t know exactly how bad it was yet, but I didn’t like the direction things were heading.

  CHAPTER 26

  IT’S REAL

  While I was smiling and enjoying my victory, things were going on around me I was totally unaware of. Buffy knew. And she was working behind the scenes, coordinating who was going where when we left Victory Lane. She sent Dana and Macy to the hotel. She told my sister Connie and Connie’s husband, Dave, that the two of us needed to be alone. They all left. So did Buffy’s parents. They took Caitlin with them.

  At the same time, someone from NASCAR was telling me it was time to go up to the suites and toast my victory with some NASCAR folks and some more sponsors. But I was getting fed up. Between Schrader coming to Victory Lane and me getting all those blank stares about Dale, I knew that something wasn’t right.

  A toast? I thought. I don’t want a toast. I’m going to my bus.

  “Buffy,” I said, “let’s go to the motor home.”

  The van that was going to take us to the suites took us to the coach lot instead. It was maybe a three-minute ride, the first time Buffy and I had been alone together since we got up that day.

  As we settled into the van, I looked at her, and she just shook her head. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

  When we got to the motor home, Buffy and I walked inside. It was empty, just the two of us. I had a strong idea what I was going to hear from her. And it wasn’t going to be good.

  With the last shred of hope I could muster, I asked, “He’s gonna be okay, right?”

  I knew in my mind Dale was hurt. My hope was he at least was still alive.

  With that, Buffy began to cry. Through the sobs, she struggled to say the words I dreaded most: “Dale is dead.”

  I reached over and grabbed her, and I didn’t want to let go. Then she said, “I’m so sorry, honey. You don’t deserve this. Nobody does.”

  With Buffy in my arms and thoughts of how-could-this-be-happening running through my head, we just sat there and cried, thinking about our loss. Thinking about Teresa and the family. What it must be like for Dale Junior. Dale’s mom back home in North Carolina. Everyone on the team, everybody in NASCAR, was going to be devastated by this.

  Buffy and I sat together in the motor home where we had started our day. So much had changed in the last twelve hours.

  When I woke up that morning, it was all about winning. Winning was all I could think of. Now I didn’t want to think about winning at all. The day was now about a terrible loss. I just wanted to sit there, hold my wife, and cry.

  And that’s what I did.

  For a long time, we didn’t speak. We just stared off into the distance. What could we say? It was way too early to try to explain or justify. I just kept asking myself and asking God: “Why? Why? Why?”

  Back in Bristol, when my dad was there and I wanted to win so badly for him, I blamed God when I didn’t. I questioned why he couldn’t let Dad and me celebrate that night. Then a month later, when we got the big win in Charlotte, I felt ridiculous for blaming God. I promised I would never do that again.

  But there I sat a year and a half later, and I was on the verge of blaming God again.

  But there is a big difference between blaming and asking. And who else could I ask? Where were the answers? This seemed so unlikely, so unfair.

  But no one could answer my question. As I looked around, I realized I had so much to be thankful for, especially all the people who surrounded me. They went to work immediately, making sure I got through this as well as anyone could. Buffy, managing all the information and giving me a shoulder to cry on. Ty helping Buffy come up with a plan. Schrader coming to give me a heads-up like he did. All these people came to me because they loved me, and I couldn’t have gotten through it without them.

  As Buffy and I collected ourselves, people began showing up to share their condolences with us. My brother Darrell and his wife, Stevie. My teammate Steve Park. Dale Jarrett. When NASCAR president Mike Helton was able to pull away from the hospital, he too came by.

  Lying in bed that night, I was reflecting on the journey I’d shared with Dale. I was also thinking about my dad: how he’d been distant when I was little and we’d grown so close over the years. About his brave battle with lung cancer. About the day in Bristol when I got beat but Dad was still so proud of me. And the big win for my dad in Charlotte. Then at the end, him feeling like I didn’t understand the pain of his illness as he died slowly in my arms.

  After wallowing in all that emotion for hours, I reminded myself that I was a Christian. I believe everything does indeed happen for a reason. God does have a plan, although sometimes it’s hard to understand. I decided that I needed to share that with the world, tell a positive tale about Dale’s faith. If I could be positive, it would honor God. In my mind, two things were clear: It was Dale’s day to go. And I was the perfect person to win that race that day.

  The more I thought about it like that, the more sense it made to me. If some other guy had won, he would have wanted to grab credit for himself, credit for his team. That would have been completely understandable. He’d have had every right to feel that way. We are talking about the Daytona 500 after all. But I could use my position as the 500 winner to honor Dale. My team was Dale’s team. He was as responsible for me winning as I was.

  It was Dale’s time to go, and I was the perfect person to give him credit for what we had accomplished together. I wanted to comfort all those who were hurt by telling them about the Dale I knew. My voice was certainly more relevant after what had happened that day than it had ever been before. So I had to embrace the opportunity to help others.

  I had gone to bed that night with the crappiest attitude you could possibly imagine. Why, God? Why me? Again. How unfair it was to Dale! How unfair it was to me! But I fixed all that. I woke up the next day with a fresh view and the most positive attitude anyone could have had in a situation like that.

  “I’m gonna honor Dale,” I said to myself that Monday morning. “I’m gonna think of that as my responsibility from now on. To comfort people. To help make others feel as at peace with the loss of Dale as I possibly can.”

  CHAPTER 27

  DAY AFTER

  On the day after the Daytona 500, the winner heads up to New York for a couple of days of media attention, stopping by the Today show and Live with Regis and Kelly and some of the other shows. He gets to listen as everyone tells him how great he is. But my job that Monday was different. No New York City. No Letterman for me.

  I was mentally ready and personally okay with tackling what lay ahead. One of my first responsibilities was to speak at a post-race press conference in Daytona and afterward head back to North Carolina to attend a funeral for a dear friend. It was so unnatural. I told myself I was going to make the most of this unimaginable situation. When something so unexpect
ed happens, there is no way to be adequately prepared.

  In the NASCAR world, the blame game had already begun. Fans were asking, “Earnhardt’s dead? How could that be? Whose fault was the wreck?”

  “Sterling Marlin hit Dale,” people were saying. “He caused it. It was his fault.”

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. Man, we were just racing cars, racing for the biggest win in NASCAR. It was crazy to blame Sterling Marlin for this. But that’s exactly what some people were beginning to do. I didn’t understand it. It was wrong. Sterling was just racing, racing exactly like Dale would have. But fans were heartbroken. Their hero had been taken from them and they wanted someone to blame. Things got so ugly that Daytona track security and the Florida state police had to keep a special eye on Sterling. And back home in North Carolina the local police stationed a squad car outside his shop in Mooresville after a threat was phoned in.

  But no way was Sterling responsible for Dale’s death.

  Dale’s car spun out as he tried to protect Dale Junior and me, waging a four-way battle for third with Kenny Schrader, Rusty Wallace, and Sterling and trying to keep the other cars back. Sterling’s car touched Dale’s. But that’s what happens in NASCAR, especially when the checkered flag is waving.

  Sterling wanted to speak out. He wanted people to know he was hurting too. He wanted to get on top of the situation in a hurry. He left Daytona right away and headed home to Columbia, Tennessee. When he got there, he went to a newspaper office near his house and answered questions from the media.

  “I’d do anything not to be here today addressing this topic,” he said. “The focus should be on the Earnhardt family.” But with all the uproar about him and his role in the crash, he said, “It appears that it would be best if I talked.”