For love of the race, Schrader goes on

By Marty Smith, Turner Sports Interactive
April 16, 2001
8:00 PM EDT (0000 GMT)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - In the high-class, high-speed and ever-evolving realm of professional racing, Ken Schrader is a staple of old school logic.

He competes when he doesn't have to, because he knows one day he won't be able to. He cherishes every lap he logs, all too aware that his next could be his last.

Ken Scrader lost more than just a colleague in Dale Earnhardt. He lost a friend.

The 16-year NASCAR Winston Cup Series veteran has seen far too many world-class careers prematurely cut short by on-track tragedy -- Neil Bonnett, John Nemechek, Kenny Irwin and Adam Petty to name a few. He saw Ernie Irvan taken to the brink of death twice at Michigan, and Schrader himself has hit his share of walls far too hard.

Schrader was also one of the last few individuals to see Dale Earnhardt alive, and that image is one he won't soon forget.

As he steered high through Turn 4 at Daytona International Speedway on February 18, Schrader was engaged in a fierce battle with a pack of cars all vying for a top-five finish in the last lap of the Daytona 500. He had no idea what the next few seconds would hold. He was unaware that Sterling Marlin had inadvertently tapped Earnhardt in the rear, hurling him up the track and into Schrader's path.

He had no idea that earning a top-five finish would soon seem so trivial.

When Earnhardt came up the track and into Schrader's path, the two collided, Schrader's Pontiac hitting Earnhardt's Chevrolet in the right side door. Earnhardt hit the wall. Head-on. Hard.

"We came off (Turn) 2 and I went to the outside thinking if someone goes with me, I'm okay," said Schrader, slowly contemplating his words. "I thought, 'I'm gonna run third to sixth, I'm not gonna win.' (Dale Earnhardt) Junior and Mikey (Waltrip) had already distanced themselves.

"I figured it was gonna get all jammed up there on the bottom, so I figured I'd run the top and see what happened. All of a sudden, Dale shot up across the track. Bam. We hit side-by-side, identical, wham.

Schrader has dealt with tragedy before. Continuing to race has helped him recover.

"So I just got outta the car and walked over there thinking, 'Well, I'll just go over there and take his window net down and see how mad he is. At least this time I know he's not gonna be mad at me.' Most of the time when we're all layin' in a pile we're mad at him. I went over there and wasn't quite prepared for what I saw."

What Schrader saw was NASCAR's seemingly indestructible superhero sitting lifeless in the very same seat in which he'd conquered the world for years. Upon impact, Schrader assumed Earnhardt might be injured but had no idea his life was in jeopardy.

"I had no idea how severe it was until I walked up to the car because I wasn't thinking anything like that," Schrader said. "When I came out of the infield care center and got bombarded with interview requests, I just said one little thing. I didn't feel like it was my place to tell the world what the deal was. I knew it was bad."

In the end, it was one of the worst tragedies ever to rock the NASCAR landscape.

Since that time, a tornado of controversy has swirled through the Winston Cup Series. Whether it be safety belts, the HANS Device or some other safety-related topic, driver safety has come to the absolute forefront of everyone's mind, especially those who strap into the 3,400-pound machines to do battle each week at 170 m.p.h.

"I think there's a lot of good people working on a lot of things," Schrader said. "I think NASCAR is spearheading it. They don't go out and tell the world about it, but they've been working and working and working on this stuff.

"There's places where soft walls could help, but they've really got to be researched so we don't wind up with other problems because of soft walls.

"I think the biggest help for us right now would be softening up the front of these cars a little bit, giving them some more crush and ease up the amount of energy the driver is absorbing. The concrete didn't get harder and we didn't start hitting harder in the past 10 months."

Now, two months after the tragedy, Schrader has learned to cope with the loss and dispelled all rumors of his retirement.

Despite rumors of retirement, Schrader is having a strong season.

In fact, the 45-year-old driver is enjoying his finest season in years. He ranks 14th in the championship standings with two top-10s in the first eight races and is confident that a win is feasible in this 2001 campaign.

"I'm having as much fun as I've ever had," said Schrader, who once competed in more than 100 races in a single year and still takes part in approximately 85 per year. "This started as a hobby. Now, it's still a hobby -- just one I get paid for.

"The addition of Johnny Benson has been big. We've got both teams in the same building now. It's my second year with the team, too, so we're meshing a little better. I don't want to take any time off. One day I won't be able to do this."

During his recent weekend off, Schrader ventured to Nashville, Tennessee, to compete in the ARCA RE/MAX Series event at brand-new Nashville Superspeedway -- a race he promptly went out and won.

Despite the deep sorrow felt by all in the wake of Earnhardt's passing, Schrader leaves no doubt that the best therapy for the true racer is to do what they do best -- go race.

"You've just got to get in there and go," he said. "If it takes a while to come back, you're in trouble and you need to be doing something else. It's what we do.

"Yeah, we've had a rough, rough 10 months, but you look over our sport for however many years and things happen. All these kids that get killed playing high school football don't make the front pages of every newspaper in the country. If they did, then high school football would look a helluva lot more dangerous.

"It hasn't affected my outlook at all," he continued. "By no means did I like what I saw at Daytona, because what I saw was a friend in serious trouble. But that was nowhere near the first time I walked up to a friend in trouble. So it really hasn't affected my outlook on racing.

"I hated it, hated it so bad for the family, for Taylor and the kids. It's part of the deal. It's out there, it can happen. Everybody's freakin' over how much has happened lately, but you can't make these (cars) bulletproof. No one tells us to climb in them.

"I feel a whole lot better climbing in those things than squatting down at some line of scrimmage where I know the other guy gets paid a whole lot of big bucks to run over me."

Spoken like a true racer, one who doesn't race for fame, nor for adoration, nor for money.

Schrader races for love of the race.