Word: earnhardts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Ironhead, the Intimidator, Earnhardt: he had massive, irresistible appeal. He brought fans into the sport who wouldn't know NASCAR from NASA. He was the rebel soul of a sport that had gone corporate. What roiled inside him usually came out, sometimes in fits of temper or unruly behavior behind the wheel. Whenever a race started, you wondered what Dale Earnhardt might do today...
...Daytona Beach, Fla., a Sunday ago, it was an Earnhardt kind of day: contradictions everywhere. It was going to be a triumphal afternoon, with a huge network audience watching, the ultimate proof, as if anyone needed it, that NASCAR was nationwide. Yet the sissies had won too, and rules were in place to slow the cars, but the changes seemed to be making the racing more dangerous. An earlier crash looked like an Armageddon of a wreck: 19 cars careering around, smashing into one another, Tony Stewart's Pontiac soaring through the air, ripping the hood off another car, metal...
NASCAR racers drive stock cars, simultaneously primitive and ultrasophisticated versions of the Fords, Chevies, Pontiacs and Dodges in America's driveways. These cars have engine blocks of 1960s vintage; neither you nor I have bought a car with a carburetor for 15 years, but Earnhardt drove one at Daytona. Certainly his Monte Carlo was a modified machine: its engine had been juiced to about 720 h.p.; its sheet-metal skin was lighter than a road-ready car's; its roll bars were designed to render the cab a fast-moving cage...
...Dale Earnhardt...
...Petty and Earnhardt, each of whom won the season-long Winston Cup title a record seven times, who had the largest legions of fans. King Richard's subjects loved his laconic aw-shucks manner and the way it contrasted with his ferocity behind the wheel. Ironhead's followers reveled in their hero's orneriness. Jeff Lancaster, owner of Lancaster's BBQ, a restaurant and car-racing shrine in Mooresville, N.C., explained it last week, the walls around him covered with souvenirs of racing giants: "He was the John Wayne of NASCAR. He was a kick-ass, take-names kinda...