DALE EARNHARDT: 1951-2001: The Last Lap

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The coziness of that community couldn't hide the fact that NASCAR has become a corporate force in spectator sports and television programming, with 13 racing circuits involving stock cars, open-wheel cars and trucks. It is now a well-tuned operation, staging 2,300 races in 42 states each year, the cream being its 36-event Winston Cup series, which, heading into 2001, landed a six-year network-television contract worth about $400 million annually. The NASCAR organization is still owned by the France family; its public corporation, International Speedway Corp., owns or operates 11 tracks coast to coast, with new venues in Chicago and Kansas City, Kans. Last year ISC had revenues of $440 million, up 47% from 1999.

In the past five years, NASCAR has been electric, and its reach has been growing. Its sponsors, which include wholesome chocolates and colas as well as cars and cigarettes, have been delirious. This year, for instance, UPS dropped its Olympic sponsorship and added NASCAR. Keep in mind that UPS sells its delivery services mostly to other businesses, an upmarket audience. If outsiders wanted to continue in ignorance of NASCAR because of class snobbery, who cared? Not UPS.

Success is not without its risks, though, and drivers perceived that the level of danger on the track was rising as NASCAR and its sponsors pursued maximum entertainment value. This year marked the return of DaimlerChrysler's Dodge division to stock-car racing. Chrysler, despite deep corporate troubles, had committed north of $60 million to the effort, and it was out for glory. "Dodge's appearance certainly did increase the level of competition," says Kevin Kennedy, a spokesman for Ford's racing division. "There was [Dodge] red everywhere you went in Daytona."

So they had the new cars and a brand-new $2.4 billion network TV contract, and the last thing NASCAR officials wanted at their showcase event was a repeat of the boring 2000 Daytona, which featured only nine lead changes and a walkaway win by Jarrett. Last autumn they experimented at the circuit's other superspeedway course, Talladega, with ways of slowing down the cars to make for bunched, exciting racing. Some of the drivers had come out of Talladega looking ashen--"A little too exciting at times for me," admitted Gordon--but there had been 49 lead changes and no big wrecks, so it was determined to go with restrictor plates on the carburetors (to reduce horsepower) and aerodynamic spoilers on the cars' surfaces (to increase drag) at Daytona too.

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 walls. Countering track officials who said the cushioned barriers would take longer to clean up after a wreck, Earnhardt said earlier this year, "I'd rather they spend 20 minutes cleaning up that mess than cleaning me off the wall."