Michael Waltrip on Dale's Death, His Fated Daytona 500 Victory, How it Changed Everything

Michael Waltrip, the two-time Daytona 500 winner and brother of I-Fave Darrell Waltrip, shared with Imus today the heart-wrenching experience he details in his book, In the Blink of an Eye: Dale, Daytona, and the Day that Changed Everything.
 
Though everything looked “about right” today in North Carolina, where Waltrip was located, it was anything but that more than ten years ago in Florida, when NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was killed in a crash during the final lap of the Daytona 500.
 
“For race fans, and perhaps beyond the sport of NASCAR—and I’m not exaggerating—it was like Elvis died,” Imus observed.
 
It was, Waltrip agreed, a terrible day for car racing, and a day to which he’ll be forever linked. “I won the race that Dale got killed in,” he said, as if he still couldn’t believe it, all these years later. “Not only was I driving Dale’s car, but Dale was my friend.”
 
Earnhardt had wanted Waltrip to drive for him for a few years before it actually happened, and prior to the 2001 Daytona, Waltrip had lost 462 consecutive races. When he finally—finally—won a race, and when that race was arguably car racing’s most prominent one, Waltrip thought “the world was perfect,” he said, as he celebrated in Victory Lane. “Little did I know, the man who was instrumental—the reason why I won the race—was dead, just a couple hundred yards away.”
 
The challenging range of emotions Waltrip experienced that day, and has been dealing with since, almost kept him from writing In the Blink of an Eye. “I had this great strategy: if something bothers you, just ignore it and it will go away,” he said. “Obviously that’s not a real smart way to go about living your life.”
 
As the tenth anniversary of the horrific accident approached, Waltrip finally decided to address the tragedy. “I’m really glad I did,” he said. “I learned things about that day that have brought me some comfort, and I feel better about it now.”
 
He learned things that allowed him to shed some of the guilt he had been carrying for a long time. “Everybody said he died blocking for me and Dale, Jr.,” said Waltrip, who, before he began working on his book, had never even watched the race. It turns out, Dale had only been blocking up until that last, fateful lap.
 
“He was racing, trying to protect the lead for us, and just pushing us along,” Waltrip expained. “But on the last lap he knew, as I knew, the only person who was going to win that race was me or Dale, Jr.”
 
And so, Waltrip deduced that Earnhardt was racing for third place when he crashed, not blocking for his two drivers. “Knowing that he saw his two cars driving off to win the Daytona 500—I’m a car owner now, and I know that’s probably got to be the greatest feeling,” he said, laughing.
 
In the book, Waltrip also divulges how he found out about Earnhardt’s death, a gradual process that unfolded following his victory. “I kept asking everybody, ‘Where’s Dale? I know he’s gonna be here, I know he’s coming,’” Waltrip said. “He had this way of grabbing you, like the cowboy he was, and putting a big hug on you, and I could not wait for that bear hug.”
 
That hug never came, but bad news did: first of Earnhardt’s injuries, and then of his death. “Eventually my wife and I were alone, and I looked at hear and said, ‘He’s going to be okay, right?’” Waltrip said. “I knew he was hurt. And she said, ‘No. He’s dead.’”
 
Though he tried forever to ignore his pain, Waltrip now believes Earnhardt was smiling when he crashed, much like he made millions of fans smile over the course of his career.
 
“It’s a pretty simple game,” Waltrip said of car racing. “But darn—the joy it’s brought many people, and the joy that Dale brought folks, and that Darrell does every Sunday on TV with his commentating—we’re just blessed to be able to do all that stuff.”
 
-Julie Kanfer