My older brother was a fan also and he took me to the first race I ever attended at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida. That was in February 1961 for the Daytona 500 on the new paved two and a half mile track. That was the first of many events I would attend both at Daytona and other not too distant destinations such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Darlington. For many years I have recorded the races.
What I love most about the events is that they are always preceded by a wonderful prerace show which includes a command over the loudspeakers from the announcer of the broadcast that "Now Ladies and Gentleman please all stand and remove your hats for the performance of the National Anthem" which is often accompanied at the end by a flyover of aircraft as the Anthem reaches the "Though The Rockets Red Glare" part. Often there will be a contingency of some branch of our military as the flag is proudly displayed.
Before the Anthem is performed the cameras will span the stands as well as the pit row where drivers stand with their wives and children in reverence as a minister delivers a prayer for those in attendance as well as members of race teams.
Finally the Command comes over the PA for the drivers to start their engines. Only those who have attended a live race can really understand the adrenaline rush as the sound of forty 700 plus horsepower engines roar to life. Then the cars slowly file onto the track following a pace care for a couple of laps before the pace car leaves the track and the flagman waves the green flag to signal the start of the race. Then depending on the type track they are racing on the cars soon may reach speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour if that weeks event is on some of the longer oval courses. Some tracks are only a half mile in length and that is an entirely different event involving much banging and scrubbing at speeds of about a hundred miles per hour. There is also some road courses where there are both left turns as well as right turns. Drivers have to be multi talented and the temperature inside the cockpit is often a hundred and forty degrees. Drivers wear fire-suits which are equipped with cooling devices but drivers often collapse at the end of an event as they exit the car and remove their neck restraints and helmets.
Only those who have attended an event and felt the sensation of the roar of the engines and the smell and taste of the exhaust and burning rubber permeates the air. Then there is also the sight of fans many of which are beautiful ladies and the men who occupy the seats in the stands.
All in all it is quite a contrast to what I hear and read about the millionaire NFL players who proudly knell sometimes with raised fists as the Anthem is performed.
Following is a great story which I have copied which gives a far greater insight into my favorite sport.
Please enjoy.
Life, (near) death and racing: Ernie Irvan’s tragedy and triumph at Michigan
Ernie Irvan keeps all the trophies from his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career in a display case. He and his family are moving this weekend from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Ocala, Florida, and he recently packed the trophies to prepare for the movers’ arrival.
He won the Daytona 500, the night race at Bristol and both road courses. He won at Talladega, the longest track in the sport, and at Martinsville, the shortest. He won 15 Cup races in all, and as he grabbed each trophy, memories of the circumstances behind each win came back.
“When I was packing them all up, I saw the one at Sears Point. You think of what happened at Sears Point. You see one at Watkins Glen, and think about what happened at Watkins Glen,” Irvan says. “Whenever you’re sitting there, you always reminisce.”
When he picked up the Michigan trophy — his 15th and final win, 20 years ago this summer — the memories were particularly powerful. And not just because it was the last Cup race he ever won, but because of brutal crashes before and after that win and the life-saving maneuvers of a doctor who arrived at his car. Without that doctor and helicopter on site, he says, he would have died at the track and never gotten that final win.
“All the things put together, it was just kind of a miracle,” he says.
THREE WEEKS GONE
The mid-1990s were a brutally difficult time for NASCAR. On April 1, 1993, defending champion Alan Kulwicki died in a plane crash. On July 13, 1993, Davey Allison died in a helicopter crash. In February 1994, Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr died in separate practices for the Daytona 500.
When Ernie Irvan joined Robert Yates Racing in late 1993 to replace Allison, he had long been considered a fiercely competitive and extremely talented driver. When he won his third race in the Yates car in the 10th race of the 1994 season, he appeared poised to take the next step and win a championship.
“It was just instant success, instant speed,” says Doug Yates, RYR’s chief engine builder and son of owner Robert Yates. “It was a perfect driver for our No. 28 Texaco Havoline Ford. We couldn’t ask for anybody better to succeed Davey Allison.”
Through the first 20 races of 1994, Irvan had three wins and 13 top fives. He had been first or second in points every week of the season. It looked like he and Dale Earnhardt would have a season-long battle for the championship. Superstardom awaited.
The Friday of the August Michigan race, Irvan, Doug Yates and their wives played Monopoly in Robert Yates’ motorhome parked inside Michigan International Speedway. Throughout the game, Irvan made side deals. He accumulated first great wealth, then a bunch of hotels. Soon he stacked bills high in front of him and everybody else was out of money. He beat them all.
But he has a confession to make: “I was cheating really bad.”
Doug Yates laughs when he hears this … and confirms the outcome, if not the cheating. But he wouldn’t be surprised. Whatever Irvan did – cards, Monopoly, racing, pickup basketball — he did whatever he had to do to win.
That game of Monopoly is Irvan’s last memory for three weeks.
During practice the next morning, Irvan’s Ford Thunderbird cut a tire and slammed into the wall. He was bleeding badly and says now he would have died right there in the car if Dr. John Maino, who had been stationed nearby, hadn’t arrived so quickly. Irvan was in danger of drowning in his own blood, so Maino performed an emergency tracheotomy inside the car — he cut a slit in Irvan’s throat and inserted a tube to allow him to breathe. Irvan says he would have died without that. He was on a helicopter just 23 minutes later and flown to a hospital in Ann Arbor.
Irvan suffered a traumatic brain injury, skull fracture and chest injuries. Doctors gave him a 10 percent chance to live. “When something serious happens, an eeriness comes over the garage. It becomes very quiet. This was one of those situations,” says Dale Jarrett, who drove for Joe Gibbs Racing at the time. “As we got more information, about just how serious an accident it was, our attention turned to hoping that Ernie was going to be OK. Many of us have been through blown tires, this was one of the severe cases of what can happen.”
‘WASN’T A PRETTY DEAL’
Marc Reno had been friends with Irvan for years. They had raced together and lived next door to each other when they were trying to launch their racing careers. Reno was working at the time for an XFINITY Series team and by coincidence, his hauler had been parked next to Irvan’s in the XFINITY garage that weekend.
After a dispute about tires that weekend at Michigan, Reno’s team opted to leave instead of race. Reno had just gotten home to Florida when he heard about the wreck. He immediately flew back to Michigan. “I was in on a good part of the doctors’ meetings and stuff when they told him he had a 10 or 15 percent chance of living — if he made it 48 hours,” Reno says. “It wasn’t a pretty deal.”
Reno says he flew back and forth to Michigan 10 times to be by Irvan’s side. It was unsettling to see his friend lying in the hospital bed. On one visit, he counted 21 tubes running into Irvan.
Irvan remembers waking up 20 days after the wreck wondering where he was. The TV was on, and he says he saw someone else — it turned out to be Kenny Wallace — driving his No. 28 car. He couldn’t talk, so he used hand gestures to ask questions. His wife, Kim, explained to him what had happened.
Irvan’s rehab was long and extensive. But he returned to the race car in late 1995, competing in three races for Robert Yates Racing and finishing sixth, 40th and seventh. Jarrett had replaced him; when Irvan came back, RYR expanded to a two-car team.
In 1996, Irvan won at Loudon in his 19th race back and again at Richmond a few months later. “It was just miraculous, really, that he could even be back driving a race car after everything he had been through,” says Jarrett, who won the 1999 championship for RYR and is now a NASCAR analyst on NBC. “He had such a near-death experience, and here he was performing at a high-level once again.”
The wreck left Irvan with lingering vision issues, so he raced with a patch over one eye. “He was as good or better as anybody with one eye,” Doug Yates says. “This guy is the most talented and toughest guy I’ve been around. It was truly amazing.”
‘WILL TO LIVE, COMPETE’
As the 1997 season approached, Larry McReynolds had left as Irvan’s crew chief and RYR was looking for a replacement. Reno went to the Robert Yates Racing office in Charlotte for an interview for the position. When he got back out to his car after the interview, he discovered somebody had broken into it and stolen all of his family’s Christmas presents, which had been in the trunk. But he got the job.
As the season started, the cars Reno built and Irvan drove were fast, but they both say they let a few wins get away. “I remember in 1997 thinking, ‘God, he is fast,’ ” says Kyle Petty, who drove for a team he owned that season and is now a NASCAR analyst on NBC . “He was back as a contender.”
At Michigan for the June race, Irvan and Reno must have had high expectations. Though Irvan had never won there, he had finished in the top five the two previous races. Throughout practice, Reno experimented with the car’s setup. “We started putting bigger rear springs on the car, getting the back of the car up in the air. And it would go faster and faster and faster,” he says. “Every time we would go up 50 pounds, it would just go faster.”
Irvan started 20th on June 15, 1997. He took the lead for the first time on Lap 163 (of 200) and led for 12 laps. He resumed the top spot on Lap 180. He started to cry with 10 laps to go.
“There were some tears shed in the pits as well,” says Doug Yates. “Any time you’re leading the race at the end, your stomach is in knots. The anticipation is building. Take all that and multiply it by 10, 100 or 1,000 because of everything that went on. It was a pretty special moment. It was a great day.”
As he took the white flag, Irvan thought about his wreck from three years before. He looked at the wall that nearly killed him as he zoomed past it. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to get through the corner, because that was the corner I crashed in,’ ” he says. “But everything went smooth.”
After he pulled to a stop in Victory Lane, his wife, Kim, leaned in to kiss him. “The first thing I thought of is, ‘I finally conquered this place. It didn’t get me, I got them,’ ” he says.
He climbed out of the car and was greeted by pit road reporter Mike Joy, then of CBS. Irvan seemed to have his emotions in check — he talked about sponsors and bad luck so far that year and getting a win in Ford Motor Company’s backyard. Joy asked Kim Irvan a question on live TV about the win being big for the family, and she was so speechless by what had just happened that she barely squeaked out an answer.
Joy, who now does play by play for FOX’s NASCAR coverage, compares Irvan’s win to Kevin Harvick’s win for Richard Childress Racing three weeks after Dale Earnhardt died and Jeff Gordon’s win in the first race at the Brickyard and last career win at Martinsville.
“It felt RIGHT,” Joy says via email. “Fitting, redemption, validation, relief, all yes. Historic? Moreso now than then.”
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