The Daytona 500

(Page 4: Dale Earnhardt)

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Daytona 500 eve, 1981, Boar's Head Lounge. Not a seat to be had at the bar or in the booths, David Allen Coe on the jukebox singing "Jack Daniel's, If You Please," and the Men in Table Cloths (my term for A. J. Foyt's crew, who wore red-and-white-checked shirts that were the trademark of Gilmore-Foyt Racing) keeping order in the joint. The Boar's Head during Daytona 500 week was always as orderly or as disorderly as Foyt's crew decided to make it at any given moment.

Good thing they got along with a new, young, motley crew of North Carolina boys in blue-and-yellow uniforms, or there might be hell to pay in here. The compatibility started with the drivers, for the old Texan had taken a real liking to the young Dale Earnhardt. Four or five of the blue-clad boys were in one of those big horseshoe booths in a corner. Among them, slouched side by side, Earnhardt and I sat.

Earnhardt grinned that tiny mischievous grin of his, sipped his Jack Daniel's and ginger ale—"jeenjale," he pronounced it back then—and looked out across the bar at nobody in particular. (This was when drivers still drank, still partied in public, long before they became fitness fanatics and recluses in their million-dollar motor coaches with a jaded, reclusive, filthy-rich guru named Dale Earnhardt leading their rush to aloof seclusion.)

"Shoulda heard me and Waltrip out there a while ago," Earnhardt said, meaning Happy Hour, the just-concluded final hour of practice before the race.

I turned and looked at him and didn't say anything. Didn't need to. No driver has ever been under Earnhardt's skin more than Waltrip was in those days. Waltrip in his prime was every bit as ruthless as Earnhardt, and twice as slick about it. He got away with anything and everything. He got Earnhardt's goat. Totally. (This was long before the nickname the Intimidator was even thought of, and Earnhardt at the time was, if anything, the Intimidated.) But conversely, Earnhardt was beginning to get to Waltrip. You could sense Waltrip "hearing footsteps," as they say in football. He sensed Earnhardt as a force, coming hard, coming wild. A hurricane on the horizon of the peak of Waltrip's career. So I just waited for Earnhardt to continue talking. I knew he was going to—had to.

"We're sitting there on the pit road waiting to go out to practice. Waltrip's in his car right beside me. He hollers over—he says, 'Hey Earnhardt! Can you see out that window net of yours?'" Waltrip's implication was clear: When Earnhardt slammed against whatever came alongside him on the track—the wall, other cars, whatever—was he aware of the particular object he was slamming at any given moment, or was he just slamming blindly, indiscriminately?

"I said, 'I don't need to see you coming up beside me. I can feel you.'

"He said, 'You wanna go practice drafting together?'

"I said, 'O.K.'

"He said, 'You're not gonna hit me in the ass, are you?'

"I said, 'Nah. This is just practice.'"

Earnhardt smirked.

To and from our booth there paraded an array of racing people, stopping to chitchat. To some of them I related the just-told anecdote, and Earnhardt sat there smirking, satisfied with himself and the story I was spreading.

"So," I said after a while. "How you gonna run tomorrow?"

"WFO," he said. (This was long before that expression became so well-known around NASCAR that you could just about use it for a book title.)

"WFO?"

"Wide f--kin' open," he said. "Only way I know."

"So who's gonna win?"

"Me," he said. "I ain't got enough sense to lose."

I laughed out loud and Earnhardt's face clouded up. Now he was pissed, but I thought he was just, you know, momentarily pissed.

So I said pretty loud to some people sitting at the bar, "Hey, you know what Earnhardt just said? I asked him who was gonna win tomorrow and he said, 'Me—I ain't got enough sense to lose.'"

So then half the bar erupted with laughter, and from Earnhardt I got an elbow in the ribs that was more than a nudge. I turned and looked at him, and he was seriously, unequivocally pissed. (Actually, hurt—embarrassed—I realize all these years later.)

"Why don't you shut up," he said.

"Aw, c'mon, Earnhardt."

"Shut up, Hinton!"

He was seething, staring straight down the barrel of his Jack Daniel's and jeenjale. Some of Foyt's boys came by and we got into a conversation and before I knew it Earnhardt was gone.

This was how it always would be with Earnhardt. He would tell you what was on his mind, and then be proud for you to tell some of it, and furious if you told other parts of it.

Copyright © 2001 by Ed Hinton. All rights reserved. Posted with permission of http://www.twbookmark.com. Click here for ordering information for "Daytona" at Amazon.com.