Maybe Dale Earnhardt Jr. should have taken the week off. Maybe the entire Winston Cup circuit should have taken the week off.
“Something weird’s going on; this is like voodoo,” driver Kenny Wallace said after a spookily familiar wreck on the first lap knocked Earnhardt Jr. out of Sunday’s Dura-Lube 400.
More Top Picks Best Meal Delivery For Mediterranean Diet
A wreck and then a rain delay?
“Somebody must not want us to race,” said rookie Kevin Harvick, tabbed as the replacement driver for Earnhardt Sr.’s Chevy.
Earnhardt’s father hit the wall last Sunday on the final lap of the Daytona 500 and died instantly. A week later, on the first lap of NASCAR’s next race, Earnhardt Jr. slams into the wall too. Talk about your frightening flashbacks. Does it get any creepier than this?
Earnhardt Jr. started the race on the 13th row. His wreck happened on the same part of the track–coming out of Turn 3–as his dad’s. The same side of his car–right front–hit the wall first. And there was the same shocked silence as ambulances made their way to the crash scene.
“It was eerie,” Sterling Marlin said.
Earnhardt Jr. got out of the car alive. Bruised and limping . . . but alive.
His car was not nearly as fortunate. The front end of the No. 8 Chevy was smashed. The hood was folded backward and covered the windshield. The decals were shredded and illegible. The entire right side of the car was destroyed, except for one emblem. Strangely, surreally, the No. 3 decal that was put there this week as a tribute to his father was unscathed.
“I think it’s killed the car,” Earnhardt Jr. said in a short statement released after the wreck. He would not talk to a pack of reporters who stalked his every move in the pits.
“Cars can be replaced,” Marlin said. “I’m just relieved Junior walked away from it.” NASCAR honored his father’s memory with a moment of silence before the race. Retired veteran driver Darrell Waltrip, a close friend of Earnhardt Sr.’s, spoke to the crowd of nearly 60,000 and offered a prayer.
The Dura-Lube 400 will resume Monday on Lap 53. Track crews battled a sporadic rain Sunday that delayed the start 1 hour 40 minutes. Then the race was delayed twice during its running in an effort to wait out the storm system and dry the track.
Thirty-five of the 52 laps were run under caution. Rain started again while the accident involving Earnhardt was being cleaned up.
Coincidentally, Earnhardt Jr. started in Row 13 with Marlin, who received death threats last week after his involvement in the wreck that killed Earnhardt Sr. at Daytona.
Earnhardt Jr., in his only public comments before the race, said at a news conference Friday that it was “ridiculous” to blame Marlin for the accident. Marlin said he came to the North Carolina Motor Speedway on Saturday with some security personnel, just in case.
Earnhardt Jr. and Marlin embraced during the prerace driver introductions Sunday.
Earnhardt Jr. said he had made the decision to race because his father would have wanted him to carry on. Dale Earnhardt Sr. was buried Wednesday at an undisclosed location near the Earnhardts’ hometown of Kannapolis, N.C.
“We’re doing all right. . . . I’m fine. I’m glad to get back racing,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We’re doing OK.”
Earnhardt Jr.’s Chevrolet was hit from behind by Ron Hornaday’s Pontiac, triggering a chain reaction of fender-benders as the field of 43 cars roared into Turn 3. Earnhardt Jr.’s car bounced into Kenny Wallace’s car, then wound up brushing the wall and was towed into the garage area.
Stacy Compton, a five-year veteran driving a Dodge, will be in the lead when the race restarts.
“You always want to race,” Compton said. “You get pumped up and get ready and come here and sit around for four or five hours. That’s tough.”
Sunday, it was impossible not to think of the senior Earnhardt.
The North Carolina Motor Speedway handed out free Earnhardt pennants to the fans, who stood and waved them as the race started. Some people held up three fingers, signifying Earnhardt’s car number. Others held up signs that read, “We’ll always remember you, Dale” and “There’s somebody rubbing fenders with God in heaven.”
Before the race, fans gathered at the huge rock near the entrance of the speedway offices. The names of all the winners of the two annual races at the Rockingham track are engraved on the rock, but Sunday it was turned into a shrine for Earnhardt Sr. Some floral arrangements were placed near the rock.
More Top Picks Best Body Socks For Autism