When Dale Earnhardt crashed on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, America lost an iconic sports figure. NASCAR lost one of the best drivers in its half-century of racing. A family lost a father and husband. Millions of fans lost a rags-to-riches hero, a son of the South who realized his dream on the way to authenticating theirs.
Ken Schrader lost a best friend.
Much of the emotion of the hard minutes that followed the Earnhardt crash fell first – and fiercely – on Schrader. Schrader’s bright yellow car, also involved in the wreck, stopped beside Earnhardt’s Chevrolet as they dropped down from the speedway banking. Schrader climbed out of his car quickly and ran to check on Earnhardt. He waved to nearby rescue workers, encouraging them to hurry to the scene.
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For reasons that would become all too apparent in the hours and days that followed, Schrader has never discussed publicly what he saw in those moments. But he quickly determined the person he should tell immediately.
That was Michael Waltrip.
Waltrip, unaware of the dark drama unfolding at the crash scene, was in the middle of a long-delayed celebration in Victory Lane. Minutes earlier, he had won the Daytona 500, the sport’s biggest race, in a big way, drafting along with teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. in cars owned by Dale Earnhardt. For a while, it was happiness of the highest sort, Waltrip finally ending a 0-for-462 winless streak for the man who had kept the faith in him despite those numbers.
After leaving the crash scene, Schrader hurried to Victory Lane.
“Mikey is one of my best friends, and I didn’t want him to be blindsided,” Schrader said. “I went to Victory Lane and pulled him aside. I didn’t say what I thought the final deal was going to be, but I told him to be ready for it, that it could be.”
After Victory Lane, Waltrip visited the press box for the winner’s interview. That session ended quickly as officials escorted Waltrip out of the area. As darkness settled over the speedway, it became increasingly clear that this day at Daytona would end in misery and grief. As news spread, fans gathered around campfires inside and outside the track, Earnhardt Nation beginning the process of trying to understand Black Sunday.
For Schrader, it all cut deeply. He and Earnhardt had been friends since Schrader arrived in North Carolina in the 1980s to pursue a Cup Series career. They raced together. They fished together. They flew across the country together. They even bought an amphibious car together.
They lived a few miles from each other near Mooresville, North Carolina, and both were building racing shops at the same time in the vicinity. Earnhardt’s shop, the predecessor to the giant Dale Earnhardt Inc. facility (the so-called Garage Mahal) he eventually built, became known as the deerhead shop.
“I told him mine would be done before his,” Schrader said. “He said, ‘No, it won’t.’ I said, ‘Well, it will.’ He came over to my place on a Monday morning after a Bristol race, and I was in the shop early. I said, ‘I told you mine would be done first.’ He said, ‘It’s not done. I had to drive on gravel to get here.’ ”
This would not be the last time Schrader would benefit from Earnhardt’s counsel. Earnhardt had been there and done that and was eager to share his knowledge.
“Before I even bought property, he rode over with me to look at it,” Schrader said. “I wound up building a pond. He told me how I needed to do it, where to put the dam. He told me if I finished it he’d get me the fish for it. I called him when I was done and told him I needed the fish. They showed up the next week. They did come Cash On Delivery, so I guess we did have a little misunderstanding there.”
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Schrader and Earnhardt attended a car show together in Detroit. One of the vehicles on display was an amphicar, a car designed to be driven on roads and piloted on bodies of water with the flip of a few switches. Leaving the show on the way to the airport, temptation got the best of the two drivers, and they decided they had to have the car. They returned to the show.
“Dale gave the guy some cash as a down payment, and I called my shop to have a cashier’s check and a rollback sent up to get it,” Schrader said. “We got it in, and he told me not to even think about putting it in the water until he was with me. Of course, we did it anyway. He got a little pissy about that, but he never gave me his half of the money other than the little he paid down.”
The amphicar story could have gotten even better. Schrader said the late NASCAR president Bill France Jr. and former NASCAR official Gary Nelson co-owned one of the vehicles, and there was preliminary discussion about a match race between the two amphicars on Lake Lloyd in the Daytona infield. Unfortunately, it never happened.
These and many other stories remain from the Schrader-Earnhardt friendship. As evidence of their tight relationship, Earnhardt and his wife, Teresa, invited Dorothy, Schrader’s then 10-year-old daughter, on an extended trip on the family’s yacht. “She got homesick,” Schrader said. “She got over it because Dale got her up in his lap and talked to her. She had a soft spot for Dale.”
The two drivers’ long ride ended in a moment of violence on Daytona’s high banking in a crash that seemed all too innocent before the grim truths became known.
A dramatic race finish was virtually a certainty as Waltrip, the Earnhardts, Schrader, Sterling Marlin and Rusty Wallace raced for the lead down the backstretch on the final lap. Waltrip and Earnhardt Jr. pulled away from the rest of the group as they raced through Turns 3 and 4. Schrader, Earnhardt, Marlin and Wallace were packed in a tight web as Earnhardt’s car shot up the track and into the wall. Schrader, on the outside, hit both Earnhardt’s car and the barrier.
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Schrader pushes back on the popular narrative that Earnhardt was blocking the rest of the contenders to give Waltrip and his son plenty of room to race for the win in the Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolets.
“Mikey and Junior were going to run first and second,” Schrader said. “They had the fastest cars. They were set. Dale is not blocking for them, no matter what anyone says. He’s blocking so he can finish as high as he can. If they’re going to run 1-2-3, that would be great for Dale Earnhardt Inc., but he wanted to be first.
“I went to the outside down the back straightaway because we had seen this play out time and time again. You’re not going to pass Dale Earnhardt underneath going down into three. We had to abort any idea about that kind of thinking. Instead, we had a big wreck.”
Auto racing was rocked by the death of someone supposedly invincible. His photograph was on the cover of Time magazine, and the accident made the front pages of major national newspapers. A long investigation followed, leading to major advances in driver safety.
“Obviously, I hated it for everybody,” Schrader said. “I was amazed at how big a deal it became. It was like Elvis died. Man, he’s our hero and all this, but we went to Rockingham the next week (for the second race of the season), and we raced. Things didn’t stop for the sport, but nothing felt the same. We just carried on.”
