In the Blink of an Eye (7 page)

CHAPTER 16
THE DECISION

T
hree days. Just three days. That doesn’t sound like such a long time. When I hear three days, I think about Jesus and all that went down for him in three days. I knew my life might be very different after these three days. I had fifteen years of history to overcome. Fifteen years of trying too hard and coming up short. After fifteen years, people in the NASCAR world knew me better for what I hadn’t accomplished than for what I had.

The first day of waiting for NAPA’s decision wasn’t all that bad. Dale’s optimism in the trophy room was still all over me. It was like Ricardo Montalban was standing there and had just said, “Welcome to Fantasy Island.” And the dwarf, Tattoo, agreed. Dale was confident. Why shouldn’t I be?

But day two was a different story. I did not like day two at all.

It began with me obsessing over what was going on in Atlanta where the decision was being made. All the different scenarios were playing in my mind.

I hope the people down there know what a big deal this is to me, I was thinking. I feel like getting in my car right now, driving down there and telling ’em. I wonder if they know I’ve never gone three races in anything I’ve ever started without winning except for Cup. I could tell ’em this 0-for-four-hundred-and-whatever start I’m off to, it must be some kind of mistake. I know what I’d say: I’ve never lost one race driving for Dale’s team—or for you—and maybe you guys should focus on that. But they’d probably tell me they know what they have to do to sell auto parts, and they appreciate my input, but could I please leave now so they can continue their research.

This waiting was nerve-wracking and exhausting. Then I started thinking what a big disaster a “Thanks but no thanks” from NAPA would mean for me.

I didn’t want to just fade away as a footnote in NASCAR history—a guy who may have lost more races than anyone in Cup. I wanted to change that. I wanted to be a winner. I couldn’t stand the thought of how the Waltrip family history would read after NAPA’s “No, thanks”: One brother, eighty-four wins, three championships. The other brother, zero and zero.

Sure, I was the sweeter, taller, and better-looking brother, but they don’t put that in the record books. A-holes!

This career that had started with such promise could soon be ending in disappointment. Day two was dark. I couldn’t wait for it to end. It did.

Day three was Friday, decision day. I woke up in Richmond, Virginia, where that weekend’s NASCAR races were being held.

Day three could be a whole lot better, I knew—or a whole lot worse. Or the news from Atlanta could be: “We need three more days, Dale.” That would be better than an outright no, but how much better? Dale had made it clear he needed to know by Friday.

And he didn’t just make Friday up. That’s when he
had
to know by in order to get ready for Daytona.

When I got out of bed in my bus at Richmond International Raceway, I knew that this most likely would be the day I’d find out what my future looked like.

Would I just continue to be the so-so race-car driver laboring and hoping I’d win because everybody else ran out of gas like they did in Charlotte when I won for my dad? There could be worse things, I told myself. You can’t win if you’re not out there trying.

It looked like I’d be able to do something in 2001. But I didn’t want to do just something. I wanted to race for Dale. With that opportunity, I could define my career.

Come on, you bunch of folks down there in Atlanta who I don’t even know! Come on, NAPA! Come through!

Fortunately for me, being at Richmond meant being at the racetrack. Nothing takes your mind off the outside world like strapping yourself into a seven-hundred-horsepower race car. That’ll grab your attention. For me, most of that Friday I knew I’d be focused on the race and my car.

After making a couple of practice runs, I looked up and Dale was walking toward me. He leaned in and asked how I was doing. I went right into telling him about my car.

“I can’t get it to turn,” I said. “And when it does, the back end won’t stay under me. Same old stuff you fight at Richmond.”

Typical racer-to-racer chatter. But Dale didn’t come over to ask me about my car, and I think it’s funny that I didn’t realize that. Dale had come to tell me NAPA had called.

But I was making it hard for him to deliver the news. Before he could get around to telling me what he’d come over for, I asked him: “What’s your car doing?”

“Which one of mine?” he asked. “The one I drive, or the ones I own?”

Then suddenly it struck me: Oh, yeah. He does own cars. And it’s Friday, NAPA day. I forgot. How could I do that? “Right. Your cars. Am I gonna be driving one of them next year?”

He nodded and then gave me that big Earnhardt grin. “Yep. NAPA is in. I’m going to race three Cup teams next year.”

“Well, congratulations, car owner,” I told him.

“You too, driver.”

Do you know how many guys in the world would want to be addressed by Dale Earnhardt like that?

“Driver.”

That’s who I’d just become, the one-in-a-million guy.

I wanted to jump for joy. And I tried to do so, and to grab Dale too. But I was strapped in. I could barely pump my fists. But I was happy. Another answer I wanted to hear.

The crazy thing was, I couldn’t tell anybody. It wasn’t like I could push the radio button and tell my current team that Dale Earnhardt and NAPA had just hired me. After all, I was in Richmond to race for their team.

So when Dale walked off, I just had to sit there. All by myself. On Fantasy Island.

But I wanted to tell somebody. I couldn’t wait for practice to be over. In fact, I couldn’t wait for the weekend to be over, for the season to be over. I didn’t give up on the rest of the 2000 season. But the races I most looked forward to were the ones coming up in 2001, the ones I’d be racing in for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.

The person I wanted to tell first was Buffy. She was waiting in the bus. She was as nervous as I was to learn the answer from NAPA. So when I got out of the car, I went straight to the bus. We high-fived like you see on TV. Then I told her, “We gotta call Momma.” We did, and Mom couldn’t believe it. After sharing the news with my family, it was time to share it with the NAPA family.

To do that, Dale and I headed west aboard N1DE, his Learjet, to attend a big NAPA convention in Las Vegas. It was going to be a quick trip: We left Statesville Wednesday around noon and would return there twelve hours later, after spending six or seven hours in the air and a few more with the NAPA folks in Vegas.

When we got to Vegas, Dale introduced me to the NAPA family as his “next winning driver.” Me, the driver of the new NAPA #15 car.

Back on the jet heading east, you probably would have thought we’d sleep or just relax. But that wasn’t how Dale rolled. He liked to play gin rummy. The game was Rummy 500; the first to get to five hundred points won. That could take a while.

Three hours and twenty minutes later when we landed in Statesville, the score was 640 to 620. The game went into overtime. You see, I was leading when we got to five hundred, but not by much, and Dale said I had to win by twenty points. And by the time we got off the plane he had beaten me.

I’d told Buffy. Buffy and I told Momma. Dale and I told NAPA. Now it was time to tell the world. We needed to hurry up and do the telling.

We wanted the announcement to have a little drama. But keeping secrets in the NASCAR world is never easy. There’s people you have to tell. If you’re starting a team, you have to let your team know. You’ll need a sponsor. You have to tell your sponsor your plan. You have to hire people. They’ll want to know what they’ll be working on. Sometimes, by the time you get around to the formal announcement, everybody already knows.

Whether everybody knew what Dale was going to announce or not, they wanted to hear him explain—not what he was doing but why he was doing it. So when Dale and Teresa announced a press conference at DEI headquarters, there was a huge turnout.

I drove up in a NAPA delivery truck with a giant blue-and-yellow hat on top of it.

I didn’t so much mind the first question that was asked. I just didn’t like how it was asked.

“Why Michael?” one of the reporters asked in a tone that was nowhere close to flattering.

Dale’s answer sounded familiar to me. I’d heard it before, and it sounded just as great as ever.

“Because Michael will win in my car.”

CHAPTER 18
DAYTONA BOUND

I
’d done my share of losing over the past fifteen years—and maybe a couple of other people’s share too. But I didn’t feel like a loser anymore.

I didn’t care what the record book said. I didn’t care what condescending questions the reporters might ask. The Michael Waltrip who was on his way to Daytona in 2001 under Dale Earnhardt’s wing? This Michael was undefeated, and he was walking around acting like it. This Michael knew he could win. And back at the factory in Mooresville, the team knew it too.

During the winter, I had done my job. I had won my team over. They believed in me now. None of them seemed the least bit concerned about my stupid record, and neither was I. We were just race-car people, heading for the first and biggest race of the year. Man, I felt like a kid again, like that kid back in Kentucky who used to sit at his desk at Stanley Elementary School just waiting for his parents to scoop him up and deliver him to NASCAR’s holy land.

Most years at Daytona,
the pre-race routine was pretty much the same.

You had to get your picture taken in your new uniform. I stood there proudly in my NAPA blue. You had to do interviews about the upcoming season. I did one after another. It seemed like everyone wanted to ask about me driving for Dale.

Why not? This year, my story was better than most. I was the guy who’d never won, driving for the guy whose name meant winning. It was a solid two days of media swirl.

What an unlikely pair we were! Just like we’d always been: the Intimidator and the Intimidated. No one could question Dale’s record. Everyone had questioned mine.

Back in my little world in Sherrills Ford, I was the guy in charge. People looked to me for direction. Put me with Dale though: He was Batman and I was Robin. Holy skid marks, Dale! Whatever you say!

Over the years, wherever we were, people would look at us and think: What do those two have in common? If we were on the boat, it was “Why’s the guy in the funny sunglasses and the mustache hanging around with the dude in the loud pink shorts?” In New York City, “Why’s the champ having dinner with the seventeenth-place guy?” It didn’t matter where we were, people didn’t get it. Now here we were in Daytona, and suddenly, to me at least, we didn’t seem that different at all. This was serious business here. We’d come with one thing in mind: taking the Daytona 500 trophy back home to North Carolina with us.

I wanted everyone to see us as one. Owner and driver, one and the same, working together for a common goal. We were there to win. As we prepared for the race, I could tell that this was Dale’s mind-set as well. I wasn’t “goofy Mike” in Daytona, like I could be when we were on the boat. I was his driver. He had been working with me for months, making sure I was mentally prepared to win.

Dale was cool. I guess he thought he was being subtle. But I got it. I’d heard his interviews. He’d say, “You better watch that #15 car. You better watch Michael. Keep your eyes on Michael. He’s the sleeper in Daytona this year.”

He was using the pre-Daytona media to send messages to me. Messages I was getting. I didn’t 100-percent-for-sure know at the time where these messages were coming from. Looking back now it was as plain as the mask on Batman’s face. Dale’s plan was to make sure I knew what he expected from me. And that was a win.

I know now he was just saying it to make sure I heard it. Gotcha, boss! Loud and clear!

Everything up until practice began on Friday was just hype, spreading the story of Dale’s new driver. We were delivering our story to the media and the fans. That’s what this period was for. There were no cars on the track yet. NASCAR needed us to be doing something to make sure all the tickets got sold.

“Say something even if you make it up,” they were probably thinking. But we weren’t making anything up at all. We were there with one goal in mind.

Everyone’s dream of winning the race seemed downright plausible, even the championship. Before this race began, everyone was tied for the lead in points. Even a winless driver with a new team had no fewer points than a seven-time champion did.

Las Vegas had set my odds of winning the 500 at 40 to 1. Most would say that was optimistic. They probably should have been more like 462 to 1. Maybe more. My goal was to make the 462 joke irrelevant.

Daddy used to say, “Money talks, and bullshit walks.” I’m not sure how that applies here. But as practice was getting ready to begin, it seemed to relate. All the P.R. B.S. was fixing to take a backseat to what mattered the most: cars on the track. Whaddaya got? What can you do? How fast can you go? It was time to “put up or shut up.” That was something else Dad said. And that definitely applied today.

The first practice session of the year at Daytona was always the most anticipated. Not just because it was the first practice, but because it was Daytona. Winning at Daytona can define your career. And when practice starts, if you’ve got a fast car, that means you have a shot. In my case, with a new team, we couldn’t afford to waste a lot of time trying to catch up. We needed to be up front right from the beginning.

When I rolled onto the track for the first official practice session with my new #15 car and my new team, we were plenty fast. Very competitive.

As I made my way through the days and nights at Daytona, I was feeling quite comfortable. In qualifying that was held the week before, our NAPA team posted a solid time. We were top fifteen, earning us a solid start in our qualifying race that Thursday. My car was very fast, and I was very ready.

You know how much I’ve always loved the qualifying races at Daytona.

Now here we were, twenty-five years later. I didn’t wake up in a hotel that morning after driving all night from Kentucky in a smoke-filled Chevy. When I woke up I was through that tunnel, in the infield, in my bus.

I had all the enthusiasm I’d had when I was that twelve-year-old boy though. Today was going to be my day. I wanted to deliver a statement to the whole NASCAR world: Anyone who wanted to win the Daytona 500 on Sunday would have to beat me to do it. I wanted there to be no doubt about that.

I was going to make that point loud and clear in my qualifying race. And that was just a couple of hours away.