DALE EARNHARDT: 1951-2001: The Last Lap

(5 of 5)

So with new rules in place, new controversies in the air and TV cameras ready to roll, the gentlemen started their engines. It was, from the first, a terrific, thrilling race. If it was marred by that 19-car melee with 27 laps to go, this was offset by constant jockeying that would eventually produce 40 more lead changes than last year. Earnhardt, for his part, was having a decent day. Some dings to the Monte Carlo changed the car's aerodynamic shape and let him know before the endgame that he wouldn't be the winner. But up ahead, there was a solid chance that someone else from Dale Earnhardt Inc. would be, as Michael Waltrip and Dale Jr. were leading the pack. By talking with his pit crew over the radio, Earnhardt started coaching his teammates. "Those last 10 laps, I saw such a different Dale Earnhardt," said his friend and former crew chief, Larry McReynolds, who was calling the race for Fox from the press box. "I can't imagine how proud he was to look out his windshield to see his son and his good friend up there." Waltrip claimed victory, his first in 463 NASCAR races.

Earnhardt was seconds from the finish line when the first contact was made--with Sterling Marlin's car. It didn't seem a big thing, although Marlin would receive death threats in the week ahead. No. 3 veered right, plowed into the wall and slid back just as Ken Schrader's car broadsided it. The crash was undramatic. Ironhead had survived much worse.

The 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.

It was learned later that Earnhardt's left lap seat belt had torn apart, meaning he may have been thrown into the steering column. No one could ever recall a seat belt failing that way. In the aftermath, NASCAR determined that any new safety rules would not be hurried, and that the next week's race, in Rockingham, N.C., would be held as scheduled.

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 Sunday. No one in the vast, grieving NASCAR family felt that Ironhead Earnhardt, Ironheart's boy, would have wanted it any other way.

--With reporting by Brad Liston/Rockingham, Michelle McCalope/Mooresville, Collette McKenna Parker/Daytona Beach, Eric Roston/New York and Joseph Szczesney/Detroit

Chat on AOL with TIME's Robert Sullivan about NASCAR at 7 p.m. E.T. on Wednesday. Keyword: LIVE