by Joe Garner
David Pearson was almost the exact opposite. A South Carolina Zen master years before anyone ever visualized that concept, he was so alarmingly calm in virtually every situation imaginable as to make others nervous.
But these two opposites shared a profession and a passion, and at high speeds they definitely attracted one another, usually as they approached the checkered flag. Fifty-seven times in the previous thirteen seasons they had finished one-two in Cup races, with Pearson winning twenty-nine of those duels.
Against the backdrop of the Daytona 500 and Bicentennial of 1976, the legendary crash of Petty (#43) and Pearson unfolds in Florida.
David Pearson poses with his wrecked race car in victory lane after an accident with Richard Petty on the final lap of the 1976 Daytona 500. Petty could not restart his car and Pearson crawled to the finish line.
But in the days before that Bicentennial 500, it was three other drivers caught in the spotlight…and just plain caught. A. J. Foyt had his pole-winning speed of 187.477 mph thrown out after officials discovered he had used a nitrous oxide injection to boost power to the Chevy's engine during his qualifying run. Darrell Waltrip, with the second fastest qualifying speed, was next to get pinched, again for having a hidden bottle of laughing gas. And qualifier number three Dave Marcis had his time disallowed because of illegal radiator modifications intended to increase the track-hugging ability of his car.
Officials and especially NASCAR president Bill France did not find anything funny about Nitrous-Gate. Foyt was livid and protested the accusation. Waltrip and Marcis were silent and sheepish. All three were sent to the back of the pack, and when the green flag fell for the eighteenth Daytona 500, it was the Chevrolet of a veteran Midwestern driver named Ramo Stott that started from the pole.
But Stott wasn't there for long. As the pace picked up the natural leaders and stars of the series moved to the front. Hard-charging Buddy Baker led for a time, but the engine in his Ford Torino exploded on Lap 83. Waltrip's Monte Carlo lived up to Chevolet's reputation for unquestioned speed coupled with questionable durability and expired just four laps later. On Lap 143 Foyt was the next front-runner to blow. Defending Daytona 500 leader Benny Parsons was also in contention, but as the race wound down there were two cars everyone knew would battle for the victory: the blue-and-red number 43 Petty Enterprises Dodge and the number 21 Wood Brothers Mercury with David Pearson behind the wheel.
Petty took the lead with thirteen laps to go, much earlier than anyone anticipated. Pearson kept the Mercury in tight, right on the bumper of his rival. When one went low, so did the other. If Petty went a little higher, Pearson followed. Mirror images, two of the best minds in racing playing a 180 mph game of chess, both trying to see ahead to a final move that would allow him to claim the finish line following Lap 200.
As the two drivers flew into the last lap the jockeying increased. Pearson searched for enough of an opening to pass the STP Dodge; Petty, meanwhile, did his best to stay directly in front of the Mercury. In Turn 4 Petty tried to make another course correction but bumped Pearson, and both cars fishtailed into the wall.
Petty's Dodge caromed off and slid down the track. He eventually stopped, engine dead, in the tri-oval grass about twenty yards from the finish line. As Pearson was sliding back down toward the inside wall he was clipped by the car driven by veteran Joe Frasson, a nudge that turned Pearson around, back toward the start-finish line. Through it all and true to form, Mr. Calm kept his cool. As the incident was unfolding, completely out of view of his crew in the pits, a member of Pearson's Wood Brothers team instinctively yelled a warning via radio: “There's a wreck off Turn 4!” And Pearson coolly replied, “Yeah I know, I'm in it.” He had had the presence of mind during the accident to push in his clutch and keep the engine turning.
Slowly, oh so slowly, Pearson chugged his battered Mercury to the finish line. Some say 20 mph, others claim it was more like 30 or 40 mph, but there is no doubt it is by far the slowest finish-line speed for a winner of the Great American Race. Petty's crew scrambled to assist their stalled boss, but it was all over. Except for the memories of what many claim was a truly defining moment for the sport.
It was Pearson's only Daytona 500 victory. Petty would go on to win two more, for a grand total of seven. But the King is unashamedly the first to admit, “The race I'll be remembered most for—and the one I'll remember most myself—was one I lost.”
Bobby Allison holds race driver Cale Yarborough's foot after Yarborough kicked him following an argument February 18, 1979 when Yarborough stopped his car during the final lap of the Daytona 500. Allison's brother Donnie was involved in a wreck with Yarborough on the final lap which made brother Bobby stop.
1979 Daytona 500: The Rumble in the Infield
With the current-day avalanche of media coverage it's difficult to imagine a time when NASCAR racing wasn't one of the country's most popular sporting events, commanding hours of weekly television time.
However, before February 18, 1979, there had not been a live coast-to-coast NASCAR TV broadcast. There were occasional regional broadcasts if you lived in or around the Southeast, or stock car snippets cut-and-pasted between ice skating and cliff diving on Wide World of Sports. But after years of courting network television, NASCAR president Bill France was finally able to convince CBS to take a great leap of faith and show the '79 season-opening Daytona 500 live.
With a good portion of the East blanketed by a heavy weekend snowfall, a much larger than anticipated audience tuned in. The vast majority were seeing their first ever live NASCAR broadcast, and they were treated to an exciting contest from the moment the green flag fell.
Cale Yarborough, who the previous season had set a NASCAR record by capturing his third consecutive NASCAR Cup championship, was clearly the car to beat. But less than a quarter of the way into the race there was trouble. Donnie Allison swerved while trying to avoid a slower car, and directly behind him Yarborough—and Allison's own brother Bobby—were forced off the track and plowed through an infield soaked by a morning rainstorm. Yarbrough's Oldsmobile got the worst of it: repairs took long enough to cost him four laps and seemingly a chance at winning.
Still, never underestimate a great driver in a fast car, especially when it's Cale Yarborough facing a challenge. Using every ounce of his ability, every inch of the track, and some terrific pit strategy, he was able to get back behind leader Donnie Allison and the lapped car of brother Bobby for a final sprint to the finish.
“I made up my mind that he would have to pass me up high,” Donnie Allison said. “When he tried to pass me low, he went off the track.” Allison pinched Yarborough's Olds down to the apron, but Yarborough would not back off. The cars touched, and then slammed into each other again—at 185 mph!—and careened into the outside wall before sliding back down to the infield. Richard Petty and Darrell Waltrip, running third and fourth almost a mile back, were suddenly and improbably crossing the finish line one-two.
Bobby Allison completed his final lap and drove back to check on his brother. Yarborough, already out of his crumpled car, yelled at Bobby and took a swing at him through the race car window. Donnie tried to restrain Yarborough as Bobby emerged from his car. And then the real fireworks began. The three drivers started wrestling around in the infield mud. Bobby at one point had Yarborough by the throat. And it was all played out for the national TV audience.
“The Daytona 500 Fight” was the number one topic the next day at water coolers and lunch tables from California to Maine. And NASCAR racing began to scale its way up the ladder to major sporting-event status.
2001 Daytona 500: A Legend Is Lost
Michael Waltrip wasn't sure where he would be, but was fairly certain that without Dale Earnhardt it wouldn't be flying through Turn 4 in the lead on the last lap of the Daytona 500. This was Waltrip's first run in a Dale Earnhardt Incorporated car, and with Junior glued to his back bumper and their boss Dale in third, all Waltrip had to do was keep the wheels straight for another half
-mile.
In the broadcast booth, rookie announcer Darrell Waltrip was losing it…his composure and his objectivity. The three-time NASCAR Cup champion added expert analysis and high-profile star quality to NASCAR's new $2.8 billion television package, but seeing his six-foot-five, 200-pound baby brother just a straightaway from breaking a 462-race winless streak and crowning the Waltrips the only siblings with wins in the Great American Race was almost more than he could stand. Ol' DW hollering, “Go Mikey!!!!!” just seemed to fit.
But in the instant it took for Dale Earnhardt to tangle with another car and shoot up the track into the outside wall, one of the brightest, most improbable moments became the most tragic in NASCAR history.
Seconds before the checkered flag all the elements were in place for a backslapping, one-for-the-ages Daytona 500 that everyone would cheer about for years to come: The Intimidator keeps the field at bay so his newest employee and his son can go one-two in the biggest race of the season! But in the instant it took for Dale Earnhardt to tangle with another car and shoot up the track into the outside wall, one of the brightest, most improbable moments became the most tragic in NASCAR history.
Ken Schrader (36) slams into Dale Earnhardt (3) during the Daytona 500 Sunday afternoon February 18, 2001 at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. Earnhardt, the driver people either loved or hated, was killed in the crash.
Emergency workers, hoping for a miracle, immediately transported the gravely injured driver to nearby Halifax Medical Center. The trauma team worked frantically, but after twenty-two agonizing minutes realized their attempt at resuscitation was futile.
On Sunday, February 18, 2001, Dale Earnhardt was pronounced dead at 5:16 p.m. EST.
It was one of those where-were-you-when-you-heard-about-it moments. An unbelieving shock momentarily paralyzed the NASCAR nation. Heartbroken fans stood shoulder to shoulder at impromptu shrines in Earnhardt's hometown of Kannapolis, North Carolina, and seventeen miles away in Mooresville at the DEI complex. Memorials spread to racetracks big and small from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. “It's like losing a friend, even though I've never met him,” said one grieving South Carolina fan. “Dale Earnhardt was what made NASCAR NASCAR. He showed us that it's okay to be a regular guy.”
The drivers, a superstitious bunch who tend to look long and hard in the opposite direction when tragedy invades the racetrack, were similarly shaken to the core. “It was like the day Elvis died, or Princess Diana or John Kennedy or Martin Luther King,” Darrell Waltrip said. “Dale Earnhardt was not just a guy who drove a race car. He was a hero all over the world and the sport will never be the same. He was the last connection to guys like Fireball Roberts, Junior Johnson, and Richard Petty.”
1988 Daytona 500: Allison versus Allison
NASCAR is a business, a big business. But more importantly, NASCAR is a family business. And that was never more apparent than during the 1988 Daytona 500 when Bobby Allison and his son Davey turned the Great American Race into a family picnic.
Since 1959, the contest at the famous Florida track had been increasing in stature. Some three decades later it commanded comparisons to an inverted Super Bowl, coming not at the end but at the beginning of each NASCAR campaign. Daytona was by far the biggest stage the sport had to offer; drivers chased the largest purse of the year in the fastest cars their teams could build.
Father and son compete on the sport's greatest stage, the Daytona 500.
Or at least they had until 1988. Engine advancement and aerodynamic innovations had nudged speeds well above the 200 mph mark. In an attempt to slow the cars down, the use of restrictor plates that cut the air flow into the carburetor—and therefore the horse-power—was mandated for use during races on the two biggest NASCAR tracks, beginning with the 1988 Great American Race.
The featured drivers were a pair of three-time series champions, each chomping at the bit to win his first Daytona 500 crown: Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt. But the ghost of past disappointments bit them both. Waltrip was in the lead when the engine in his Chevrolet went south with 14 laps remaining. Earnhardt, on the other hand, was never a contender and felt he had been hamstrung with the new power-sapping restrictor plate. “It's a lot more dangerous out there than when we were running at 210,” he said. “I bumped and got bumped more than at Richmond.” The race became an Allison versus Allison affair over the final ten laps, father in the lead with the son he taught so well in hot pursuit. When it was all said and done, Davey's Thunderbird just didn't have the top-end ooomph to pull off the last-lap pass, and Bobby Allison—at age fifty the oldest winner ever—wound up with the third Daytona 500 victory of his career.
Afterwards, the two Allisons shared a microphone during the post-race interview normally reserved for winners only. “My parents were a real inspiration for me and now I'm racing against my son,” Bobby said. “It was a great race and I am very proud of him. He's a fine young man and a fine competitor. He drove the wheels off the car all day.”
Said Davey, happy with finishing second behind his father but nonetheless a true racer, “I spent the whole day trying to figure out a way to win.”
1993 Daytona 500: “Come on Dale, Go Baby Go!”
Every year since 1979, mid-February was supposed to be THE time, and the 2.5-mile high-banked oval known as Daytona International Speedway was supposed to be THE place.
This is where Dale Earnhardt was going to catch up to the dream, outrun the bad luck, bad breaks, and bad karma, and jettison the frustration that incrementally increased with each and every dreadful hand he was dealt during the Daytona 500.
Would the Great American Hero—and anti-hero—ever win the Great American Race?
Earnhardt made a very good case for himself in the preliminary events leading up to the '93 race and even went so far as to say, “I feel better about my chances to win this race than I have about any 500 in a long time.” So no one was surprised when Dale finally arrived in Victory Lane.
Except nearly everyone was expecting it to be Dale Earnhardt, not Dale Jarrett.
Jarrett is the son of two-time series champion Ned Jarrett, who had become a popular race announcer for NASCAR radio and television broadcasts. As a second-generation driver, DJ was trying his best to establish his own racing credentials. After breaking his 0-for-128 winless streak with a victory at Michigan two years earlier, he was once again feeling the pressure and hearing the whispers. Except from his father. “People tell me I often don't give him the credit he deserves,” the elder Jarrett said, “but I don't want to appear biased.”
Dale Jarrett, driver of the #18 Interstate Batteries car, leads the pack during the 35th Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 14, 1993 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
As the '93 race progressed, Earnhardt looked to be on the way to victory. But Jarrett stayed close and by the last lap was running door-to-door with the Intimidator as they moved together into the final turn.
It was that moment when the elder Jarrett let objectivity escape through the TV broadcast-booth window with a burst of verbal excitement, enthusiasm, and parental pride so genuine that no one faulted him for it.
“Come on Dale, go baby go…all right, come on…I know he's gone to the floorboard…he can't do any more…come on, take her to the inside, don't let him get on the inside of you comin' around the turn…here he comes…it's Dale and Dale as they come off Turn 4…you know who I'm pulling for is Dale Jarrett…bring her to the inside Dale, don't let him get down there…he's gonna make it, Dale's gonna win the Daytona 500! All right!”
Dale Jarrett was understandably elated, and almost as excited as his father. “I sat in my parents' car when I was eight and nine years old, pretending I was driving in the Daytona 500,” the thirty-six-year-old driver said. “Of course, I won every time back then. Now I really have won it.”
Meanwhile, standing once again in disappointingly familiar territory, Dale Earnhardt did his best to be philosophical. “I've lost th
is thing fifteen times, but I think tomorrow will still be Monday.”
1981 Daytona 500: A Win Fit for a King
There are seven seas, seven days of the week, seven sacraments, seven deadly sins, seven wonders of the world, and seven innings before you stretch.
But there is just one driver who has seven Daytona 500 wins on his fit-for-a-King racing résumé.
Richard Petty began his career in 1958 and soon moved into the spotlight with hard-charging victories on paved tracks, dirt tracks, long tracks, and short tracks from one end of NASCAR's traveling circuit to the other. But in addition to his seven championships and record-setting 200 career wins, Petty's royal status is very much tied to his proficiency—no, make that his domination—in the biggest and most important race of each season.
The King rides to victory.
In the King's first two Daytona 500 victories (1964 and 1966) he was clearly the fastest on the track. During the next decade Petty would combine his considerable driving talent with great cars, smart pit strategies, and amazing good luck—plus the bad luck that bit some of the best drivers in each of those fields—for wins in '71, '73, '74, and '79. He was a six-time winner when no other driver had more than two victories.
But number seven seemed to be slipping just out of Petty's reach. Gunning Buddy Baker, still smarting from the disappointment of losing his engine with just six laps remaining in the '73 race, ran away with the 1980 Daytona 500. Exactly a year later, it was '78 winner Bobby Allison who seemed poised on the threshold of victory. His Pontiac was the fastest qualifier, fastest in practice, fastest car, period. So when the green flag fell, no one was really surprised that Allison would lead nearly half of the 200 laps.