ALL-STAR: Junior's 2000 Win Seemingly Ushered In New Era

Sprint Cup

ALL-STAR: Junior’s 2000 Win Seemingly Ushered In New Era

When Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Sprint All-Star Race as a rookie, it seemed clear that one era was ending and another was beginning...

Jim Pedley | http://www.RacinToday.com | Posted May 19, 2011 Kansas City, KS

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Left) is joined by his father Dale Earnhardt (Right) in victory lane after winning the 2000 Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo: Harold Hinson/HHP Images)

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In May 2000, Dale Earnhardt was headed for his 50th birthday. While he was still piling up podium finishes and threatening to win an eighth Sprint Cup championship, the creases around eyes were deepening. The black trademark mustache was lightening.

And people were beginning to ask the question that is asked pro forma to all pro athletes who cross that invisible barrier that separates prime from past prime. It was asked of Earnhardt by some media fool at Texas Motor Speedway the week after he finished 39th at Bristol in 2000: How much longer do you plan to compete?

Two days later, those pondering/fretting NASCAR post-Earnhardt got a heartening lesson courtesy of the cycle of life. Rookie Dale Earnhardt Jr. got his first Cup victory at Texas.

Four races later, Junior won at Richmond to put the boot to the fluke-sayers. Well, most of them. The rest would get the boot a week after that and get it but good as Earnhardt Jr. would become the only rookie in history to win the Sprint All-Star Race.

As Junior stood covered in confetti among the strobing camera flashes in Victory Lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway that May night in 2000, hugging his beaming father, it seemed clear that one era was ending and another was beginning.

Historians will eventually judge whether that new, on-going era is a good thing or bad.

What matters is the 21st Century arrived for NASCAR that night. And for that reason – and the fact that grown men with tattoos and pickup trucks with gun racks were reduced to blubbering babies by the sight of Senior and Junior hugging in Victory Lane – the 2000 race checks in at No. 2 on the list of 10 best All-Star events.

“It was my favorite victory,” Junior told SPEED.com recently. And he has a lot of company in that sentiment.

Earnhardt Jr. was 25 years old in May 2000. Middle-aged by today’s standards but a kid back then. He’d won the 1998 and 1999 Busch Series championships. He was in no way The Intimidator Jr., but he was country-hip, likable and charismatic and, marketable.

In the red-themed Budweiser No. 8 of the car owned by his father, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was winning fans years before he was winning Cup races. He was as big of a hit in the garages as he was in the grandstands. You just knew that when the victories would start coming, the sport would have its new trans-generational superstar.

The Texas victory in early spring put Junior in the All-Star Race – the Winston as it was known then. The Richmond win prompted CMS president H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler to pick Earnhardt Jr. to win the Winston.

The irked Earnhardt Sr. Too much pressure, he told Wheeler.

Turned out Senior was wrong about that. The pressure never got to the son. During the race, Earnhardt Jr. overcame a loose lugnut and then a brush with the outside wall. And it was a good call by him and his young crew chief/cousin that secured the victory.

Two laps into the final segment, a caution flag waved. Junior cooly told crew chief Tony Eury Jr. over the radio if he could pit and take four new tires, he would win the race.

“We decided that the race pays so much to win ($500,000 plus),” Earnhardt Jr. told SPEED.com, “and you don’t think you got what you need, pit. Come in and make a change. And that’s what we did and that was the way to go.”

Junior started from the back of the pack but on the new tires began knocking down the 10 or so cars in front of him. In one of those cars was his father.

He then tracked down and passed Jerry Nadeau for second place.

With three laps to go, he pointed his Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevy at the rear of leader Dale Jarrett’s Ford, which had blue smoke blowing from its headers.

“I knew once I saw him back there, there wasn’t any chance of holding him off,” Jarrett told reporters afterward.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. could be voted in to the 2011 Sprint All-Star Race by the fans. (Photo: Getty Images)

Between turns 3 and 4 heading to the white flag, Earnhardt Jr. proved Jarrett correct. He moved past, took the white flag as the leader and then sprinted home the winner.

“To make such an impact that night,” Earnhardt Jr. said, “to be the first rookie to win it at the time, we were able to pass my dad on the outside to win it, that’s the way we did it. It was real spectacular.”

The scene in Victory Lane was raw. There was the tough old Man in Black, shaking hands and hugging and tearing up in his son’s arms. Viewers and participants couldn’t help but join in the emotion.

“I was fortunate to see that smile more than once,” Danny “Chocolate” Myers, Earnhardt’s long-time gas man and friend, said. “But thinking about that night right now, I see that smile right now in my mind. I can see that picture in my mind. It was a cool, cool thing.”

The Earnhardt Jr. story since that night has gone through a lot of ups and downs. How might that night in 2000 be viewed by history? Eddie Gossage, president of Texas Motor Speedway, put it in perspective, giving the only possible answer.

“None of us knew at the time that NASCAR was about to change,” Gossage, who was there that night, said. “At that point, Junior seemed almost worthy as the heir apparent to his father. That is why so many Dale and Dale Jr. fans feel so let down today. The potential was not only there, it was being realized. Today, in retrospect, we know that it was an unrealistic standard that was being set. Was it lightning in a bottle or just a sweet spot in time? Who knows.”

That night, nobody cared.

Jim Pedley is a veteran, award-winning sports journalist who has worked at, among other places, the Boston Globe, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Kansas City Star. Pedley can be reached at jpedley@racintoday.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Pedley

RacinToday.com

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