Paying Tribute to NASCAR Driver Dale Earnhardt
Saturday, April 5th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Americans who’ve never even seen a NASCAR race know the name Dale Earnhardt; perhaps in the 90’s it wasn’t yet a household name in America, but after his death in 2001, his name has definitely become one known to all Americans. However, a lot of Americans who know his name don’t really know who he was. Most people will be able to come up with an answer that vaguely alludes to cars and racing, but admit that they don’t know the real story behind who this man really was, both at the height of his career and earlier on in his life.
Earnhardt (not to be confused with also NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt, Jr., his son) was one of the nation’s most successful NASCAR drivers ever. His career, though ended early by an untimely on-the-racetrack death, was a lengthy and a steady one. Steady in the sense that he was consistently among the top-ranked drivers. Though his was not a household name before his untimely death, his name was more than well-known to avid NASCAR fans across the country. Even if a fan was not a supporter of Earnhardt’s team, his name was always among the top names as one of the uncontested greats among the truly great American NASCAR drivers.
Earnhardt was born into a racing family, learning most of what he knew early on from his father. It seems that Earnhardt worked so hard to become a good driver in order to show his father just what he could do. Though his father did not live long enough to see even the beginning of the height of his son’s racing career, it’s safe to say that his Dad would be more than proud of his son’s ultimate skill, career, and the positive changes that were his influence on the world of NASCAR racing.
Like Earnhardt learned from his father, Earnhardt’s son, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has followed very fittingly in his father’s footsteps. The careers of Earnhardt and Earnhardt Jr. overlapped, and Earnhardt Jr. was on the racetrack the day that his father died in a final-lap crash in 2001. As Earnhardt’s car crashed into the barrier wall, Earnhardt Jr. sped on to the finish line. The public was not told for quite some time that the injuries sustained in this crash had been fatal. It was not NASCAR’s fieriest crash; it was not even Earnhardt’s fieriest NASCAR crash. A crash from a few years before his life-ending crash in 2001 left spectators breathless, thinking that he must have sustained very serious, if not fatal, injuries…until he jumped out of the car, waving to fans, with a broken collarbone and a few other small injuries. His 2001 crash looked milder to spectators watching, but the crash turned out to be fatal.
Earnhardt has two extremely large legacies in NASCAR. The first is that he was an incredibly talented racer, with a long list of wins and an even longer list of adoring fans. The second legacy Earnhardt has left to NASCAR is one that is still evolving. His first major crash, though not fatal, stirred major changes in NASCAR’s safety regulations for their drivers. His fatal 2001 crash stirred even bigger safety changes and continue still today to be a driving force in safety regulations for NASCAR cars and drivers in addition to the construction of the tracks themselves.
Similar to sports that retire jerseys of their most famous and most successful retired players, so is Earnhardt’s auspicious number 3 black GM Goodwrench car retired. It was retired almost immediately after his death; his teammates took on a new number and a different color scheme, leaving his black #3 as the physical legacy of the bigger inspirational legacy Earnhardt left to NASCAR fans across America, and indeed, to all Americans for putting NASCAR on the map of American sports.
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