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Friday, February 23, 2001
Burton: "It's what we do"
Associated Press
They went straight from the church to the racetrack, from a memorial service in Charlotte for Dale Earnhardt to the garages at nearby Rockingham.
"It's just what we are," driver Jeff Burton said a few days ago, explaining his decision to take part in this weekend's NASCAR event. "It's what we do."
|  | | The American flag is flown at half-staff outside North Carolina Speedway at Rockingham in honor of Dale Earnhrdt. |
In that regard, racers aren't much different from the people who toil in any profession.
Throwing yourself back into work is a welcome diversion from grieving, the fastest way to restore some semblance of normalcy to a world that suddenly seems to be falling apart.
Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson returned to his team in mid-January, two weeks after his wife of 47 years lost her fight against cancer, because his children convinced him that resuming the familiar rhythms of his life was the first step toward moving on.
Oklahoma State basketball coach Eddie Sutton had his team back on the floor barely a week after two players and eight others associated with the program died in a plane crash. "What's happened is a terrible tragedy and everybody's sorry," Sean Sutton, Eddie's son and the associate head coach, said at the time. "But I think our guys realize that they've got to go forward with their lives."
Racing is our most dangerous game because it holds an allure from which even the smartest and most accomplished drivers never quite pull free. Every so often, something happens that shakes their faith and erodes their trust and the death of Earnhardt at last Sunday's Daytona 500 sent shock waves rippling through every level of the sport.
But it also served to remind the rest of us where racing diverges from just about every other line of work. Going back to the routine of their jobs may be therapeutic for the drivers, but it puts them right back in harm's way.
"None of us were ready to let Dale go and we will miss him terribly," said Rusty Wallace, who joined Earnhardt's son, Dale Jr., Daytona winner Michael Waltrip and dozens of other drivers, raceway executives and crew members at the simple memorial service Thursday morning in Charlotte, N.C.
"God only created one Dale Earnhardt and no one will ever replace him," added Wallace, one of Earnhardt's fiercest rivals, "neither in our sport or in our hearts."
And yet, that didn't deter any of the drivers from moving on. In one of those displays that gives renewed meaning to the phrase "the show must go on," members of the NASCAR circus began collecting at Rockingham, an hour's drive east, by mid-afternoon to help stake the tent. Soon, the corrugated steel doors on garages would be rolled up, followed by the familiar sights and sounds of cars being readied for Sunday's race.
Because their fates are intertwined, because they drive wheel to wheel at speeds approaching 200 mph hemmed in by concrete walls, drivers are uneasy enough about one another under the best of circumstances. When a rookie or a journeyman is killed on a track, rationalizations are easy to come by: He didn't know enough, wasn't skilled enough, wasn't careful enough, didn't have the best equipment or else he had already used up a very limited allotment of luck.
But when it happens to a driver like Earnhardt, widely acknowledged as one of the best ever, there is a renewed sense of the impending danger that is difficult to shake.
"You tend to things as you can," Burton conceded, "and mentally, there's no way you can absorb all this at once. But it's going to be good medicine to get our minds back on racing."
The NASCAR community will try hard to do that at Rockingham. Decals honoring Earnhardt will be offered to every crew, and some drivers have proposed other tributes. Ward Burton suggested painting the pace car black and adding Earnhardt's No. 3 to it. Tommy Baldwin, his crew chief, suggested leaving the first stall in the garage -- traditionally given to the reigning Winston Cup champion -- empty for the rest of the season.
NASCAR officials have already said they would not require Winston Cup teams to do anything to honor Earnhardt, no doubt because it would be even more unsettling to give their drivers the sense that one life was more important than any other.
That was Earnhardt's take, too, at least as it's been expressed by those he left behind.
"He'd want everybody to move on," said Dale Cowing, a friend who is the editor of the Mooresville (N.C.) Tribune, Earnhardt's hometown newspaper.
"In fact, he once told Sterling Marlin that if he died on the track, he'd be doing what he loves and that nobody should shed any tears."
Those who raced alongside Earnhardt and turned up at the service probably cried anyway, on the ride from Charlotte to Rockingham. But they will be clear-eyed and cold as steel once they get back on the track.
As Jeff Burton said, it's what they do.
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