Dale Earnhardt was born in 1951 in Kannapolis, North Carolina, a mill town, the son of a short-track racer. He left school early, worked in the mills and as a mechanic, and raced on the dirt tracks of the Carolinas with borrowed money until the big teams noticed him.
He won the NASCAR Cup title in 1980, in only his second full season, and then six more times with Richard Childress’s team — in 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993 and 1994 — to equal Richard Petty’s record of seven. He won seventy-six Cup races in all. In the black number 3 Chevrolet, he drove with an aggression that earned him the nickname the Intimidator.
The race he could not win was the biggest one. Year after year something went wrong at the Daytona 500 until 1998, his twentieth attempt, when he finally won, and crews from every team lined the pit road to shake his hand.
On 18 February 2001, on the last lap of the Daytona 500, his car was hit and turned into the wall at the final turn. He was killed instantly. Ahead of him, Michael Waltrip and his own son, Dale Jr., driving cars from his team, finished first and second.
His death forced NASCAR to act: head-and-neck restraints became mandatory, and energy-absorbing barriers were fitted to the walls of every major track. Drivers alive today owe him that.
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