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Great All-Star Moment No. 1: Dale Earnhardt, Sr., 1987
Written by: Tom Jensen   
05/09/2008
Harrisburg, N.C.
 
'The Pass in the Grass', the 1987 All-Star showdown remains one of the classics in NASCAR history. SPEED will televise the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race XXIV and the NASCAR Sprint Showdown live on May 17th. (Lowe's Motor Speedway Archives Photo) ยป More Photos

To hear car owner Richard Childress tell it, Dale Earnhardt, Sr. and the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race were meant for each other. Maybe that’s why the most famous driver in NASCAR created the most famous moment in All-Star race history.

Or maybe one should say infamous, because that’s what the 1987 All-Star race was: infamous.

Earnhardt came into the race as the reigning NASCAR Cup champion and he was determined to win his first All-Star race in front of his family and friends at what was then known as Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Although the race was being run for just the third time in 1987, it already had street cred with the drivers as a throwback race: No points, no holds barred, just win it or crash trying, two things Earnhardt would go on to do multiple times in succeeding years. And in 1987, Earnhardt had his game face on, his weapons on full auto, the safeties off.

He thought he was going to win or wreck. Turns out he about did both. Of course, that’s what the race was like and what promoter H.A. Humpy Wheeler hoped it would be, recalled Childress.

“I’d tell Dale, which you didn’t have to tell him, ‘All I want you to bring me back is the steering wheel. ‘Cause if you bring me back the
steering wheel, I know you’re OK.’ And he drove that sonofabitch like that,” Childress said. “He was determined to win that race. He knew when he sat down in that car, that it was going to be his race that day. Wasn’t nobody going to knock him out, take him out.”

Some say it was The Intimidator’s finest hour, others said it was winning at the cost of poor sportsmanship. Whatever it was, though, it was both vintage Earnhardt and vintage All-Star race, an event that featured some of the hardest, take-no-prisoners racing in NASCAR history.

“That’s what the race is all about,” Childress said. “You don’t want to hurt nobody, that’s the last thing you want to see.”

Hard racing and hard feelings, well, that was another matter. “That’s what they want – what NASCAR has sanctioned and that’s what Humpy Wheeler is selling,” Childress said. “That’s what that race is about, is what Dale done that year, is just drive the living s—t out of that car. And he was determined to win that race. I don’t think you could have knocked him out of the way. If there was ever a driver built for that style of racing, it was Dale Earnhardt.”

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