Dear Dale...

Dear Dale:

It's been 14 years since you left us. For many - most - of us, there hasn't been a day that's gone by that we haven't thought about you.

Most of the time it was a fond memory, like the 1998 Daytona 500 or when you and Kenny Wallace drafted to the front at Talladega and you stole your last career win. Sometimes we think about you doing something only you could do, like when you got out of your car and cleaned your windshield while you were still driving down the frontstretch at Richmond. Sometimes we think of all those times you defied the odds, like at Pocono in 1982, and we wish you could have just one more time.

There are also the times we think about all the things you did that pissed everyone off. Richmond in 1986. Bristol in the spring of 1987. The Winston in 1987. But with the benefit of time, those events - which all seemed so callous at the time - leave us with a smile.

You might not recognize things if you showed up to the NASCAR garage today. The cars have changed. The faces, for the most part, have changed. Even your namesake, the man who has carried the Earnhardt name into popular culture in ways that even you couldn't, looks different. He's done an admirable job of carrying on your name and he's won some really big races in your absence. He's built a huge following. He's not the Intimidator, and while some people wish he was, it's been good for him that he's been able to be his own man and build a legacy of his own.

Your team, a great source of pride for you in the later years of your life, is gone. We once thought Dale Earnhardt, Inc. was going to be your legacy after you left us, but unfortunately that was not meant to be.

Jimmie Johnson has given you a run for your money. He won five championships in a row, something even you never did. He's got a total of six, and just one more puts him in your company. That's something we never thought we'd see again once you left us. Maybe someday he'll match that number. Maybe he'll even beat it. I kinda hope he does. He's a great man, and I have no doubt in my mind that you'd like him.

Even if that record is matched or beat, it will never, ever change the legacy of Dale Earnhardt. Records, as they say, are meant to be broken. They are, after all, just a number on paper.

In all reality, your legacy is much, much bigger than that.


Since you left us, we as an industry decided enough was enough. We re-engineered the cars. We made some those safety devices - some of which you eschewed - mandatory. We came up with new safety devices. We made the racetracks safer. We made the seats safer.

Those safety enhancements were a wake-up call to our entire industry. But even that isn't your legacy. Again, it's even bigger than that.

Your legacy is the dozens of drivers - maybe even hundreds, or even thousands - of drivers in every level of the sport around the world that are still here because of those mandated safety enhancements.

Some of the crashes we've seen since February 18, 2001 have been frightening. Some of them have been on the sport's biggest stage in front of millions. Some of them have been on dusty dirt tracks carved out of Midwestern corn fields in front of a couple hundred people. But there is no question that injuries have been prevented and lives have been saved.

We haven't stopped ever chance of a fatal injury in motorsports, not by a long shot. We have lost drivers since that fateful day. But not in NASCAR. And that is a direct result of you. A lot of people like to compare NASCAR to a big ocean liner: it's hard to turn on a dime. But the day we lost you, that ocean liner indeed turned on a dime. It was a wake up call that, despite losing four other drivers in the year leading up to your accident - Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, Tony Roper and Blaise Alexander -  we sorely needed. It's just a shame that it took losing any one of you to wake us up to those inherent flaws.

We miss you, Dale. We miss that grin. We miss those magic moments. We miss seeing you put you arm around your kids and seeing the pride on your face. We didn't ever think we'd lose you. But unfortunately we cannot turn back the hands of time. Thankfully, though, there are many, many more drivers still with us as a result.

Race in peace, my friend.

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