In the Blink of an Eye (8 page)

CHAPTER 19
DALE’S PLAN

I
t was time to strap myself in for my first race of the 2001 NASCAR season, the twin 125-mile qualifiers for the Daytona 500.

These twins would set the field for Sunday’s running of the Great American Race. This was the first opportunity for my team and me to show our owner and the whole NASCAR world that we were here and we were going to contend. Confidence was no problem at all. Dale had been getting me ready for this day since he hired me in 2000—actually even before that, with his you’d-win-in-my-car speeches. He believed I could win. He believed in me. He had gotten me to the point where I believed it too.

And then there was the late restart. I had positioned myself perfectly to win that day and make a statement. I wanted to show the competition that I and my team had what it took to win in Daytona. Instead of delivering that statement, I made a mistake behind the wheel that cost me the race.

Eager to show everyone I was there to win, I messed up. I just simply missed a shift. I didn’t shift cleanly from second to third gear and lost my momentum. When the momentum was lost, so was the race.

I had it all set up. I could see exactly what I needed to do to win my qualifying race, but I didn’t execute. And I was right. What I saw would have won me that race. However, my missed shift caused me to finish eighth or ninth.

That night, my mistake ate at me. No wonder you’ve never won a race, I thought. You can’t even shift gears. All the work Dale had done to prepare me mentally to win the 500 was in jeopardy.

He had gotten me into such a great place. Now I was confused. I didn’t think I had what it took to win, not after what I had just done. That’s where I was mentally, not exactly the frame of mind you want to take into any race, much less the Daytona 500.

I was really beating myself up over what had happened. That night, I tried to explain it all to Buffy. As any wife would, she tried to comfort me. “That’s just part of it,” she said. “Get over it. You’ll do great on Sunday. Just remember: You put yourself in a position to win today. You can do it again Sunday.”

I certainly appreciated her effort, but I can’t say it did me much good. When I went to bed that night, my head was filled with doubt.

At Daytona, the motor-home area where the drivers stay is adjacent to the garage where the race cars are parked. The drivers’ and owners’ coaches are located in this area during race week. We’re all running back and forth to the garage area, hosting meet-and-greets with our sponsors, trading stories and gossip with each other, and, sometimes, making predictions about the race.

My motor home was parked near Jeff Gordon’s and Sterling Marlin’s, and Dale Earnhardt’s was off to the left. Thursday night’s sleep was not very therapeutic. When I got up Friday morning, I did my best to file away in my mind what had happened the day before. But it still had me a little messed up. As I walked by Dale’s motor home, I heard a sharp “Hey!”

It was Dale’s unmistakable bark.

I looked over and saw a small opening in the front door. Dale’s head was sticking out.

“Get over here,” he said.

That’s just how Dale was. Short, direct, and very much to the point. Sometimes, even if he was in a great mood, that’s what you’d get. Blunt sentences, never any doubt about what he was trying to say. And now I, his brand-new driver and longtime friend, who didn’t know how to shift gears, was fixing to get an earful, I was sure.

Man, I thought, I bet he’s gonna cuss me. He’s gonna cuss me out for screwin’ up that restart yesterday when I should have won that race.

And he’d be right. That’s exactly what I’d done. There was no excuse. I ain’t twelve, I thought. I’m thirty-seven. I can shift a gear, right? Do your job and you win. Oh, me! This is gonna be painful.

Dale never yelled at me. Except for that one day in Rockingham when he called me the P-word. That was actually funny, but this wasn’t going to be. I wasn’t sure how Dale would handle the mistake I made. As I approached him and thought about it, I had no idea what I would get.

“Where you goin’?” he asked through the door of his bus as I walked up.

“To the garage area to check on the boys,” I told him.

Dale glared at me, then motioned for me to come inside. I was uncomfortable. When I entered the bus, it was just Ty and Dale sitting there. Dale surprised me again. Instead of asking what the hell happened, his demeanor instantly lightened up. He said in an enthusiastic tone: “We’re gonna win this race Sunday.”

Okay, I thought. Excuse me? What did he just say? How could he say that after what I did yesterday? Was he not paying attention?

“Damn, Dale,” I said. “I shoulda won that race.”

“What?” he said. “I shoulda won that race. Not you. I didn’t win it either. Listen. That don’t matter. Yesterday’s yesterday. Forget about that. Pay attention to me. I’m gonna tell you how we’re gonna win this race Sunday. With the rules the way they are this year, it’s a different animal. It’s gonna be wide open out there.”

There, right there, another Dale lesson was being taught. All week long—heck, for months—he’d been preparing me for this race. And now here we were on Friday morning, talking for the first time after my screwup the day before, and he didn’t seem to care about it in the least.

He was past that. Worrying about not winning on Thursday wasn’t going to help us now.

“We’re gonna win Sunday,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Dale clearly had something in mind. Why hadn’t he mentioned it before? I don’t know. But he was telling me about it now.

“You can’t win here alone anymore,” he said. “It ain’t like it used to be. We gotta work together—me, you, and Dale Junior.” He repeated the last phrase. “Me, you, and Dale Junior. Together we’re gonna win the race.”

We had a fourth driver on the team, Steve Park. So I said, “Yeah, and Park can help, too, right?”

If three working together was good, four had to be better.

I guess not.

Dale shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t count on that,” he said. “He don’t understand the draft as well as we do. I wouldn’t count on him being around.”

Well, shoot, I thought to myself. Park’s pretty good. He won DEI’s first Cup race at Watkins Glen. But that wasn’t what I said. What I said was, “Okay. Cool. How exactly are we gonna do this?”

“We’re gonna work together—it’s that simple,” Dale said. “Whichever of us gets to the front, at the end we’re gonna push and we’re gonna make sure that person stays in the front. That’s the only way to win at Daytona with the rules we got. It’ll be the three of us against all of them at the end.”

I liked the way that sounded. Dale went on. “I won at Talladega, going from eighteenth to the lead in two laps,” he said. “And the reason why is ’cause Kenny Wallace got hooked to my back bumper and he didn’t let me go. We just went together. Herman was dedicated to me and that’s why I won that race.”

“And Herm got second,” I said.

(We called Kenny Wallace “Herman.” I don’t know exactly why. In NASCAR, it seems most everybody has a nickname. Dale had three or four. For some reason, I don’t have any.)

“This time,” Dale said, “you, me, and Dale Junior—we’re gonna be dedicated to each other, and that’s how we’re gonna do it.”

That sounded like a good idea to me. That finish at Talladega was amazing. He raced from the middle of the pack to the win in just two laps. No one had ever done that before. Then again, no one had ever done a lot of things that Dale had done.

I guess the way Dale had won Talladega and what he’d seen in the qualifiers on Thursday had him thinking about what we needed to do Sunday. He had a plan and wanted to make sure I understood it.

All this talk was new to me. I may have looked a bit confused because Dale threw a Sharpie at me and said: “You understand what I’m sayin’, right?”

Ouch! Right between the eyes!

He repeated: “We will get together at the front. And when we do, we’re staying there. Locked together.”

“Yes, sir, boss, I get it loud and clear. You can count on me.”

I had never had teammates in a race before. I was liking how this felt. We had a plan. That makes sense, right? If you go into a battle, you’d better have a plan. The Daytona 500 has always been a battle. And in 2001, it was set to be the most competitive, toughest fight in the history of the 500.

Dale had it all figured out, and I was down with the plan. Dale spoke confidently, making sure he drilled the message into my head.

One question I did have, however, was Dale Junior.

“Did you tell Dale Junior the plan?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about Dale Junior,” Dale said. “I’ll tell him. He’ll do what I say. We just have to survive early. Do whatever you need to do to make sure you’re around at the end. Whoever gets to the front first stays there.”

Dale spoke confidently, making sure he’d drilled the message into my head. He had.

This was less than twenty-four hours after my screwup. I’d spent the night wanting to slit my own throat. I hated not having performed like I should have, like Dale expected me to. But all of a sudden, it was Friday morning and Dale was saying what he said—and I was back in business.

I walked off that bus and said, “Woo-hoo! Heck, yeah!”

Just minutes after that, as I thought about that meeting in Dale’s bus, I was sure I’d never had anybody talk to me like that before. Heck, I’d never had a teammate. Now I had a whole team. And I’d had an owner lay out a real plan. And that owner was Dale Earnhardt.

Forgive me if it took Dale yelling at me to understand what he was saying. But, look, this whole idea, this strategy of working together with the other drivers and being committed to one another—that wasn’t only new to me, it was new to NASCAR. I had never looked in my mirror for one second and thought that the driver behind me was there to help me. I’m pretty sure no other driver ever had either.

I always thought the other guy was there to take my spot away and shuffle me out.

But if the three of us could be there at the end—well, maybe not. We would be in it together.

Dale’s strategy was for us to work together. As Dale explained it, we were going to team up in order to make sure we put our cars at the front of the pack. This is just a different way of thinking about racing. My job had always been to block the guy behind me. He’s got all this extra power because I’m busting the air in front of him.

If I don’t block him, he’s going to pass me. That’s what we do. That’s how you race. Or at least that’s how we always had. But like Talladega in 2000, the rules for the 2001 Daytona 500 were extremely different. The action would be intense. The only flaw in Dale’s plan, as I saw it, was how hard it would be for the three of us to race to the front of forty other cars at the end. I loved the plan, but it seemed a little unrealistic.

That was obvious to me even as I was sitting in Dale’s motor home getting his idea into my head. “Down to the end” is a long way away from lap one. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going to go on. If we were going to be able to work together at the end, we would first have to make it through the start.

There are forty other cars out there. There are two hundred laps. We would be all over that track—blown engines, wrecks, a lot of stuff would happen. But you know, nothing in my conversation with Dale that morning made me think he doubted we’d get the chance to execute his plan.

And who was I to doubt Dale Earnhardt?

I couldn’t wait for Sunday.

CHAPTER 21
GREEN FLAG

U
ntil lap fifty or so, I just ran in the pack. I didn’t make many moves. I didn’t take any chances. I just hung on. That was my plan early in the going that day. I didn’t have anything to gain by pushing too hard too soon. There have been times when I gave myself good direction then didn’t follow it. This time, I actually took my own advice. I’m happy about that.

My car wasn’t handling exactly like I wanted. It was loose. If you’re a race person, you know what I mean by that. And if you’re not, it’s funny that you’re reading my book. Anyway, when I would go into the turns, the car just wouldn’t handle like I wanted. The rear end was wanting to swing around. And when you’re running 200 miles an hour, side by side, sometimes three wide, that’s not good. I was telling my crew chief over the radio, “It’s just not right. I can’t get the back end under me.” That just about describes it: Every time I’d try to make a move and I got in a tight squeeze, it would want to spin out. So my pre-race game plan was key: My car wasn’t ready to charge, and I’d convinced myself I shouldn’t be charging that early anyway.

So I was managing an ill-handling car, along with not being overly in a hurry. I was just trying to log laps until I could get in the pit and have my crew make some adjustments.

“It’s loose—not terrible loose but sorta loose,” I told the crew before the first stop. “I’d say a six loose on a scale of one to ten. We need to work on it. I’d say a little wedge, but I’ll leave it up to y’all.”

After we pitted, I was pleased. The adjustments we made addressed my problem perfectly. In just one pit stop, the crew nailed it. That’s unusual for a new crew. There are about a dozen things they could have done to it based on my feedback, and they picked the right ones.

Now that the car was right, I needed to see what I had. It was time to get going and see what I could do. I needed to know how much car I had under me. I didn’t want to wait any longer. Fifty laps, sixty laps—the race was roaring by. I had to see if I had the horse under me I thought I had, one I could actually ride to the front of the pack. If the handling was right and I was doing everything I knew how to do and I still couldn’t get there, then that would be a real concern for me. I wouldn’t be in control of my own destiny. I would be just another car in the crowd. I knew that as soon as I got my car handling right and I decided it was time to go, I’d better start gaining some ground. Oh, and I did.

Draft, block, pass: It really wasn’t so complicated. That’s what I’d been doing my whole life. And I was doing it again. Weaving through the traffic and moving up a car at a time.

The block part of the technique used to win at Daytona is interesting. Everybody does it. You block for two reasons. One is the obvious reason: to keep someone from passing you. But the second reason is at least as important as the first one: so you can get a push from the guy following you. Two cars hooked up at Daytona go way faster than one. You block. The guy pushes. You speed up. It’s a wonderful thing.

By the time we hit lap 70, I had raced to the front of the pack. I was leading the Daytona 500, driving for Dale Earnhardt. It felt great. But there was a lot of race left to go. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Mikey, I thought.

Things were going perfectly—so far. I’d definitely learned I had a car I could win the race in. I’d gotten the adjustment I needed. I’d been patient long enough. I’d absorbed the flow of the race. When I was ready to go, I went. From lap 70 to lap 170, I was at or near the front most of the way. I didn’t lead much, but I led some. And I was certainly competitive through the whole middle part of the race.

With thirty laps to go, things were getting really intense. This is to be expected so late in such a big race. With every lap that goes by after the halfway point, the intensity ratchets up a notch. Early in the race, if you were thinking about trying to squeeze into a tight hole, you might say, “Ah, I’d better not try that.” Now it was getting down to where if you needed to squeeze yourself into a hole, you were going to squeeze in there—or try, anyway.

When people start squeezing into holes and taking chances like that, that’s when crashes occur. And when crashes happen at tracks like Daytona and Talladega, the restrictor-plate racetracks, the crashes usually involve a whole bunch of cars at once. At plate races, pretty much everybody on the track is in that same draft.

On this day at Daytona, there were thirty-some cars in this lead draft. The front of that pack is the safest place to be. At lap 172, I made it to the front again. At lap 173, I was very glad I had.

Coming off turn two, somebody tried to get in a hole that wasn’t there. There was a major crash. More than twenty cars involved. A serious, race-altering pileup on the back straightaway. When I looked in my mirror, there was stuff flying everywhere. One car was even flipping, doing cartwheels back there. Smoke, dirt, parts, pieces—what a mess! What a crash!

Back in 2001, even more so than now, you worried anytime you saw any wreck, especially one of this magnitude. Part of your brain always thinks, Someone could be hurt back there. Could be someone I’m close to. Heck, it just as easily could have been me. But at the same time, there is also relief. Your car’s not torn up. You can race. It’s really nice when the big crash is behind you or you weave your way through it somehow.

I was looking in the mirror seeing all these cars wrecking behind me, and I was thinking: I hope everyone’s okay. For sure, that took a bunch of guys’ chances away.

The caution flag flew, and it was quickly replaced by the red. The wreck was so big, NASCAR didn’t want us driving back through all the debris. Besides, the ambulances needed to get to all the cars that were crashed to make sure no one was injured. Whenever there’s a red flag, the field is brought to a stop just past the start-finish line. As we rolled to a stop, I was looking in my mirror to see how many cars had actually made it through the wreck, how many people I was now going to have to fight to win the Daytona 500. But what quickly caught my attention were the two cars directly behind me. One was red and one was black. It was Dale Junior and Dale, just like Dale had said it would be.

Dale Junior and I were ahead of the wreck. Dale had somehow weaved through it. Can you believe that?

I kept looking and finally thought: Where’s Park? He wasn’t around, just like Dale had said he wouldn’t be. I mean, seriously? I know Dale’s won seven championships and seventy-some races. But this was freaky. How did he know this? The three of us, one, two, three! It took me a minute to get my brain around that one.

Now we were working together for real. We didn’t have to sort through forty other cars anymore to find each other. Most everybody had crashed. There were maybe fifteen of us left. And the three of us were up front. For the first time I could see it. I could see exactly what Dale was talking about. The three of us, up in the front. It was time to put our plan—Dale’s plan—into action.

Line up and work together.

Once NASCAR lifted the red flag, we all made our way to Pit Road for the final stops of the race. I entered Pit Road as a leader but exited fourth. Dale Junior had taken the top spot, and Dale was third. The green flag waved on lap 179, and the field was cut in half. But I couldn’t tell. The action at the front of the pack was more intense than it had been all day.

It was wild up there. We were all fighting to see who could get to the lead.

Sterling Marlin had a really fast car. He pushed his way to the front after the caution. But just a lap later, I grabbed the lead back from him.

Sterling was right on my bumper. Dale Junior and Dale were behind him. We needed to shake Sterling out of there. And with fourteen to go, that’s what Dale and Dale Junior did.

Now we were one, two, three—all lined up at the front. Imagine that! Again, it was just like Dale had planned.

Thirteen laps from the finish.Talk about drama! But I had Dale Junior on my bumper, and no one could really get up to me. With eleven to go, Sterling got close. But our three cars tied together held him off. Junior and I were bumper to bumper at the front of the pack. The guy who had a real fight on his hands was Dale. He was in third, in a vulnerable position.

I was safe, I was hoping, because Dale Junior was latched onto me and was pushing. So I had a buffer between the action and me. Dale Junior was in a good position too, because Dale was pushing him. Dale was his buffer to all the people who were wanting to intrude on our little party at the front. Dale was third. He had no buffer. Nobody was pushing him. Fourth, fifth, sixth, all those other guys—they weren’t just waiting around. They weren’t sitting in line like Junior and I were. They were trying to fight their way up past Dale, press themselves into the action, and grab the lead. And they didn’t have much time left.

As each lap passed and I held the lead, I kept wondering, “What’s Junior thinking?”

The drama continued to build for me as each lap passed and I still held onto the lead. Holding it and keeping my eye on Junior.

As far as I was concerned, he was a wild card. I didn’t really know Dale Junior. I believed what Dale had told me, that we would all work as a team—the three of us—and win the race together.

I believed it, but I didn’t know it.

Dale Junior and I didn’t have a relationship. If you had asked Junior, he would have said: “I don’t know why my dad and Mike are friends. I just know they hang out all the time.”

I think Dale Junior wondered what we had in common that made us friends. I was about halfway between their ages. Dale was forty-nine. I was thirty-seven. Dale Junior was twenty-something, just a kid. I was an old married guy with kids. Dale was too. So I had more in common with Dale than I did with Dale Junior. Like most fathers and sons, the two of them were at different places in life.

Junior had had a lot of attention cast on him since he first showed up in NASCAR. Being Dale Earnhardt’s son meant the whole world was watching every pass he made. Dale Junior certainly hadn’t disappointed anyone who hoped he could hold a steering wheel like his old man could. Championships in the Busch Series, winning in his rookie season in Cup, Junior was proving he could. But because of all the attention he had gained from driving a car, he put a shell around himself.

I know Dale was proud of Junior. Dale the dad would light up when talking about all his kids and their accomplishments.

Dale had told me I could count on Junior. Now he was right behind me. I hoped Dale was right. He certainly had been so far.

I drove my car ninety percent of the time with my eyeballs in the mirror. I ran all the final laps that way. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust what Dale had told me. It was that I had to make sure I did all I could do to keep Dale Junior right in my tire tracks. I’d never talked to him about any of this. And this was the Daytona 500. He was just a kid. What was he thinking? He knew the plan, didn’t he? Would he do what his father told him to? I believed he would. Was I being naïve to think so? This was all new to me.

I sure wished I’d talked to Junior before the race to see where he was mentally, to hear those words directly from him.

That would have been a good idea, Mike. A little late now. Get over it.

Worrying about all that now was dumb. What was important was for me to focus on my car and keep myself positioned on the track the way I wanted to. If I hadn’t been able to stay right on the bottom of the racetrack and I’d opened the door for Dale Junior to get in there, I bet he would have. He would’ve said: “You slipped up, and I had to go.” That’s how that would have gone down.

So it was really important for me to do my job, not to give him that opening. And that’s what I did. I did my job exactly like I was supposed to do it. I did it perfectly. I never gave Dale Junior the room to make a move on me.

I just kept watching my mirror, and it kept looking just like Dale said it would. Dale Junior was right on my bumper. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to do. And behind him, Dale was moving around a lot. I could see Dale Junior, and there were times on the straightaways I could see Dale too. All those other drivers were drafting up on him. There was a lot going on back there. I could tell that.

The other drivers were getting their runs. They were trying to pass. First Sterling. Then Schrader. Rusty Wallace too. They were all trying to fight their way to the front. Their chances to gain ground on me and Junior were winding down. If they were ever going to get to us, they had to get around one of the fiercest competitors of all time. It seemed like Dale had drawn a line in the sand: “No way you’re crossing this.”

But as determined as he was to keep them from crossing it, they were equally determined to say, “What line?”

For anyone going mano a mano against Dale Earnhardt at Daytona, I’d bet on Dale Earnhardt every time. They were teaming up on him, and that made it a fairer fight for those guys, I guess. But they couldn’t pass.

Dale was working, man. Blocking, crowding, getting run into and bounced off of, and drafting all over the place. He was doing all he could do to keep pushing us ahead. Dale said this is how it would be: Someone would get the lead and the other two would push.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I am sure: He wanted to be right where he was. I bet he didn’t think Dale Junior or I could do the job he was doing. And he was probably right.

If either one of us had been in Dale’s position, I don’t think we would have been as good or disciplined or smart as he was at sticking to the plan. He knew he needed to be that guy. He stayed back there in third and fought and blocked and tried to keep all those people off us. He did just that. He did an amazing job.