Word: driver
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Sometimes too hard. In one early-career incident, he tapped and spun the car of dirt-track driver Stick Elliot. The word went out that Stick's mechanic had a gun and was looking for Ironhead. The grease monkey didn't find him, and the racer who would soon be known by a second sobriquet, the Intimidator, drove off to greater glory. Earnhardt was NASCAR's rookie of the year in 1979 and won the season-long title in 1980. Even critics of his aggressive tactics acknowledged that in Earnhardt, NASCAR had as talented a driver as it had ever...
Earnhardt, who won that race at Talladega, had opinions on slowing down cars, as you might imagine. "If you're not a race driver, stay the hell home. Don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Get the hell out of the race car if you've got feathers on your legs or butt," he said a year ago, addressing the chicken-hearted. He had opinions about proposed safety measures too. He wasn't wearing the new Head and Neck Support (HANS) system, which fights whiplash in a crash. But Earnhardt was in favor of so-called soft...
...track hounds knew better. They knew that when a car isn't coming apart, the energy isn't dissipating. The sheet metal in these cars is designed to shred and fly away so that a driver isn't crushed or sliced. Earnhardt's car was still more or less intact. "Talk to us, Dale!" The plea from the pit crackled in the earphones of a driver--a champion, a legend--who was, in all probability, already dead...
Incredibly, or possibly not, Dale Jr. announced he would race his Earnhardt Inc. car. And Childress Racing, which had employed the senior Earnhardt, got a replacement driver for Sunday too. Some outsiders were surprised by these responses. But they fit both the old and new codes of NASCAR: first, that racing is what Pettys and Allisons and Earnhardts do, come what may; and second, that NASCAR is a Big Business that doesn't stop for one man, even though it's the man who helped make it big. So they planned to rev the engines and drop the green flag...
...When a driver steps into his car, he knows, but doesn't necessarily believe, that accidents happen. That's true of any athlete entering his arena. He approaches his task confidently, understanding its risks, eyeing its rewards. What may cause awe or fear in others is, for the professional athlete, eased by the mundane ritual that accompanies the job, and an obligatory nod at danger. We all accept that...