It was a theme that if you tried to ignore it would come out and make sure you couldn't. It was five years ago that Dale Earnhardt died. It was a theme in coverage of Dale Earnhardt Jr. - can he win the Daytona 500 five years after his father's death? It was the subject of a SPEED Channel special that reinforced the impression that racing and its media are the most self-congradulatory industry out there. And it was the subject of many media pieces like this one.
I remain mystified that the sport continues to engage in historical revisionism on Dale Earnhardt, the biggest lightning rod of controversy the sport had ever seen. Nowadays many a driver is a lightning rod of controversy - Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson come to mind immediately - but in the 1980s and a lesser extent the 1990s it was not something the sport was quite used to.
In remembering Dale Earnhardt the sport does a disservice to its history, for it has glossed over very real shortcomings in Earnhardt in its effort to glorify him.
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The biggest disservice done to history is the glossing over of Earnhardt's on-track tactics. Tony Stewart set off the week-long controversy over "aggressive driving" during Speedweeks 2006 and then proved himself a supreme hypocrite once the shooting started. Dale Earnhardt was a common instigator of such controversies and certainly got an earful about it over the years.
"His mind goes out of gear when he turns on the motor." - Richard Petty, 1986
"If a man's got to put you out to beat you, that ain't what I call racing." - Bill Elliott, 1987
"I don't think NASCAR fined Dale Earnhardt for what he did at Richmond, I think they fined him for all the things he's done leading up to Richmond." - Darrell Waltrip, 1986
"Whoever wrecked us was driving a black car with a 3 on it." - Dick Trickle, 1992
"Why did he do that (wreck Al Unser Jr.)? He didn't have to do that." - Al Unser Sr., 1993
"He hasn't seen the last of me. I'm not going to stop racing him. I can tear up as many cars as I need to." - Mark Martin, 1993
"He's always the one who cries about the manufacturers championship, well he didn't help the Chevrolets today (at Phoenix)." - Ken Schrader, 1993
"He took the air off of me, then he hit me. It wasn't close at all." - Bobby Hamilton, 1996
"Has he ever said he meant to spin someone out?" - Terry Labonte, 1999
Earnhardt may have been the first NASCAR driver in history to be the subject of negative news coverage over his driving tactics - ABC News for one focused on that in 1987. And it led to an important anomoly - Earnhardt was perhaps the very first NASCAR driver ever who had a national fan club that was dedicated to opposing him. Fans Against Dale Earnhardt sold merchandise at all the NASCAR tracks before abruptly disbanding following his death.
Fan hatred of Earnhardt usually made him the most booed driver during introductions and led to several incidents, such as at The Winston 1994, where Earnhardt crashed against the wall in the trioval of Charlotte; roughly 100 fans gathered at the scene and many reportedly dumped beer on Earnhardt's head as he was climbing out of his car. There was also a near-riot at Bristol following his last-lap crashing encounter with Terry Labonte, where fans were seen burning Earnhardt merchandise in the track's parking lots afterward.
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There is also the frequent assertion about how much influence he had with NASCAR, about how when he spoke, NASCAR listened, and how he spoke for the drivers. Race drivers are a notoriously divided lot and Earnhardt usually spoke for himself, and was as big a hypocrite as any driver in the garage, particularly on restrictor plate racing, which Earnhardt always griped about yet so often excelled at.
As far as influence in the sport goes, one is hard-pressed to remember a single policy issue where NASCAR made changes because of Earnhardt. One can easily recall a recent policy change brought on by a driver's lobbying - NASCAR's change to lower downforce and softer tires from 2004 onward was a direct result of frantic and very public lobbying by Rusty Wallace, who was serially incensed at the fuel-mileage success with a package of high-downforce and hard tire compounds exhibited by his Penske Racing teammate Ryan Newman in 2003.
One can also recall the influence of another driver on the sport. Alan Kulwicki turned down offers of high-dollar NASCAR rides to build his own team; he won the 1992 NASCAR title as an owner-driver and following his death numerous NASCAR drivers, notably Geoff Bodine (who purchased the #7 Kulwicki team from his estate) and Ricky Rudd formed their own teams and became owner-drivers. Bodine and Rudd together won ten races in the 1994-8 period, a period where the balance of power had shifted toward the owner-driver.
One simply can't recall similarly dramatic influence by Dale Earnhardt.
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Earnhardt is sometimes called The Dominator, and it is periodically stated that he dominated his era of the sport. Yet a simple check of the sport's history proves this wrong. Including ties with other drivers, Richard Petty won the most races in a season on seven occassions - 1963, 1967-8, 1970-1, 1974-5. Darrell Waltrip did it six times - 1979, 1981-4, 1989. Jeff Gordon did it six times - 1995-9, 2001. David Pearson did it four times - 1966, 1968, 1973, 1976. Cale Yarborough did it four times - 1974, 1977-8, 1980. Bobby Allison did it twice - 1972, 1983. Rusty Wallace did it four times - 1988-9, 1993-4. Bill Elliott did it three times - 1985, 1988, 1992.
Dale Earnhardt did it only twice - 1987 and 1990.
One can also argue that Earnhardt's titles came amid less competition than that Richard Petty raced against. In the period of 1970-84, facing over 40 races with at least 40 official lead changes and another 30 with 35 or more lead changes, Petty had to race very, very hard to win. In contrast, Earnhardt's heyday of 1985-2001 saw just seven races with at least 40 lead changes and seven with at least 35. There are numerous reasons for this decline, but a major one undoubtedly is that Petty raced two generations of drivers who raced for the win while Earnhardt raced two generations who raced for points.
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The sport did not see five-year retrospectives on the deaths of Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki; it has not seen any recent retrospectives on the deaths of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, or Tony Roper; it has all but ignored Tim Richmond following his 1989 death; it has forgotten Ernie Irvan after injury ended his career. What retrospectives there have been have been low-key and quite dignified. The continuing rememberence of Dale Earnhardt, meanwhile, has become a continuing spectacle with an embarassing level of marketing behind it.
One has to ask when the sport will tone it down and be more honest about its past.
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