Earnhardt’s Last Lap: 2001 Daytona 500
fanhouse.com
Filed under: Daytona Int’l Speedway
Over the next two weeks, FanHouse will be covering the top sports stories of the decade. In our first installment, Holly Cain looks back at the 2001 Daytona 500 and the impact that losing Dale Earnhardt had on NASCAR.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Initially it looked like a routine last lap crash in the Daytona 500. Nothing spectacular. Dale Earnhardt had a resume full of last-lap disappointments in this great race.
So on Sunday, February 18, 2001, most of us sitting in the press box high above Daytona International Speedway fully expected the indomitable, rascally Earnhardt to once again climb out of his wrecked race car, wave to the crowd, and argue with the track workers about an ambulance ride to the care center, insisting instead on heading directly to victory circle to congratulate his longtime friend Michael Waltrip for scoring the first win of his career and his son Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a chip-off-the-ol-block, runner-up effort.
Earnhardt’s inevitable anger that he crashed would be supplanted by pride for his team, we figured.
Earnhardt’s fatal crash into the Turn 4 wall late that afternoon proved to be anything but routine and, in fact, changed absolutely everything routine about the sport.
The 2001 Daytona 500 is FanHouse’s pick as Motorsports Story and Race of the Decade.