The Rock provided healing when sport needed it most

This time, a piece of the Rock wasn't for sale. The right buyer could purchase the whole doggone thing.

When North Carolina Speedway went on the auction block Tuesday, it wasn't just a place that was being bargained away. There were valuable memories included as part of the package, too.

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This is the place where racing legends with the last names of Petty, Earnhardt, Gordon, Yarborough and Parsons came to clinch driving championships in pre-Chase years past. It is where Matt Kenseth once edged Kasey Kahne by .010 seconds in one of the closest, most exciting finishes in NASCAR history. It is where the legendary Dale Earnhardt clinched the record-tying seventh, and last, of his Cup Series championships in 1994.

But most important of all, the one-mile banked speedway in Rockingham, N.C., affectionately known for more than 40 years simply as The Rock, is where NASCAR came for some much-needed healing during the last weekend of February, 2001.

One week earlier, Earnhardt had passed away during a last-lap accident in the Daytona 500. Less than 48 hours before qualifying began for the Rockingham race, dozens upon dozens of drivers past and present and every NASCAR official imaginable had been among a throng of 3,000 attending an invitation-only memorial service for Earnhardt at Calvary Church in Charlotte, N.C.

There had been talk of postponing the Rockingham race. Eventually that talk was dismissed. It was decided that the racing must go on, and immediately.

In many ways, Earnhardt in death became even bigger than he had been in life, where he lived larger than most. And his final parting gift to the sport he loved so much was prophesized by Bruton Smith, chairman and CEO of Speedway Motorsports, that afternoon outside Calvary Church after the memorial service.

"The sport has lost great drivers before, but I think this has brought attention to our sport in a way that is unbelievable," Smith said of Earnhardt's death. "If you're not an avid race fan, you've heard about our sport now -- and maybe it is an awakening. Maybe, even in death, Dale Earnhardt is going to continue to build our sport. That's the way I look at it.

"This has been such a major, major shock. But it's brought a bigness to our sport that I never realized was there. We're going to miss him, but we will go on. We've exposed our sport internationally now, maybe in a way that we never could have. I guess the only way I can put it is that this reminds me a great deal of when Elvis [Presley] died. It makes me wonder if Dale Earnhardt will have the same impact on his world that Elvis did on his."

Show must go on

Two days later, the show went on at Rockingham.

No one really wanted to be there; yet no one who felt any obligation at all to stock-car racing could stay away.

"As much as you want to hope it's business as usual, it's not," driver Jeff Gordon said upon arriving at the facility. "There's definitely something missing and everybody is very aware of that."