Relaxing Behind The Wheel Easy For Earnhardt
Some Dale Earnhardt fans say he could win races with one hand tied behind his back.
Well, it wasn’t quite that easy, but last Sunday, during Earnhardt’s near romp at Martinsville Speedway to his 67th career victory, several sharp-eyed observers noticed the seventime Winston Cup champion occasionally driving one-handed.
Not only was he steering with just his left hand as he negotiated the .526-mile oval in the midst of heavy traffic, but Earnhardt had his other arm and hand laid casually across the roll bar, a wholly relaxed posture.
When he was asked what he was doing driving one-handed, Earnhardt grinned from beneath his bushy black mustache and replied: “Relaxing.”
Even while driving side-by-side with other cars?
“The car was really good,” he said. “I was relaxing. Hey, you don’t drive all the time with two hands, do you?”
Asked how relaxed he was, Earnhardt, tongue firmly planted in cheek, said, “I had my leg propped up on the dash, next to the brake pedal, too. Had the CD playing Brooks & Dunn and a little Alabama.”
Earnhardt said he doesn’t use his one-handed style very often.
“Just at some of the shorter tracks,” he said.
Stand by your man
Kim Irvan, wife of NASCAR’s Ernie Irvan, is totally supportive of her husband’s racing comeback.
Irvan returned to racing this weekend in the SuperTruck and Winston Cup races at North Wilkesboro, N.C. He has been out of action, except for some private testing, since a near-fatal crash on Aug. 20, 1994.
“When I met him, he was racing,” Kim Irvan said last week at Martinsville, Va., after her husband’s comeback was postponed by rain. “When I married him he was racing. I knew what I was getting into, I just didn’t know the extent of it.
“I feel good about him going back to racing,” she added. “I’m nervous, but I want him to be able to do it. He had to convince me he was capable of racing again, and he’s done that.
“It’s sort of a relief that he’s finally going to be able to do it. I just want him to get that first one under his belt and go on. It will get easier.”
Fantasy trip
A chance meeting at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport turned a trip to a race into a fantasy weekend for a couple from Kona, Hawaii.
David and Elaine Lamphere, long-time NASCAR fans who had never been to a Winston Cup race in person, had to use up some senior citizens miles on United Airlines before the expiration date and decided to make the long trek to Martinsville, Va., - about a 6,000-mile round trip - for the Goody’s 500.
They said they picked Martinsville because “it looked real nice” on TV.
While waiting for an early morning connection in Chicago after a red-eye flight from San Francisco, the couple saw Bill Broderick, Unocal’s racing public relations man and the “Hat Man” who runs NASCAR’s victory lanes, waiting in the lounge.
Recognizing him from TV coverage of victory lane, David Lamphere walked up and said hello. When Broderick found out the couple was traveling so far just to see their first race, he decided to make it a special trip for them.
He arranged infield access for the couple and introduced them to favorite driver Dale Earnhardt, who gave them a tour of his team’s Transporter. They watched Sunday’s race from the seats they had bought near the start-finish line and pronounced the weekend “way past first-class.”
Political Petty
Richard Petty, the king of stock car racing, is apparently considering running for secretary of state in his native North Carolina.
Petty, who retired as a Winston Cup driver in 1992 and is now a car owner, served as a Randolph County commissioner from 1978 until 1993 and has been rumored several times in the past to be running for public office in North Carolina.
This latest report appears to have more substance than some of the earlier talk. Paul Shumaker, Petty’s chief political adviser and a consultant to the Petty Political Action Committee, said, “I can say that it’s something that’s being considered.”
Petty put together the committee last year to help Republican candidates from his home state.