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Informationen zum Autor Darrell Waltrip is a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and the author of the New York Times bestselling autobiography, DW: A Lifetime Going Around in Circles. He is currently the lead analyst for NASCAR on Fox Sports . He lives in Franklin, Tennessee. Nate Larkin , a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, is a popular speaker and the author of an inspirational book for men, Samson and the Pirate Monks: Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood . Klappentext From former NASCAR racing champion and current FOX Sports announcer Waltrip comes an intimate account of one of the most dramatic and tragic days in the history of NASCAR: the 2001 Daytona 500--the day that racing legend Dale Earnhardt! Sr. died. Leseprobe Sundays Will Never Be the Same CHAPTER ONE MY NEW LIFE Have you ever gotten out of bed in the morning, walked into the bathroom, looked at yourself in the mirror, and said, “Today things are going to change”? Me neither. I don’t talk to myself in mirrors. But I have gotten out of bed knowing that things were going to be different, and that’s exactly how I felt on the morning of February 18, 2001. Big-time changes were happening for me, and I knew it. People around me knew it too, and they had been saying so all week, speculating and joking with me the way race people do. Still, none of us—certainly not me, and not anybody I talked to in the days afterward—suspected that the Sudden Change, the lightning-quick pivotal event that would burn that Sunday into our collective memory and alter the course of our lives forever, was only hours away. On that morning the air around the Daytona International Speedway was heavy with the familiar smells of fuel and burning rubber. The track had been busy for two weeks in the run-up to the first big race of the season, the Daytona 500. In case you’re not familiar with NASCAR, let me explain. Typical events in NASCAR’s top series are three-day weekends, with practice laps and qualifying heats on Friday and Saturday, followed by the big race on Sunday. The Daytona 500, however, is different. NASCAR holds its “Super Bowl” at the beginning of its season rather than the end, and this race, its richest and most prestigious, is the final act in an extended drama of speed and suspense known as “Speedweeks.” This year major spectator events during Speedweeks had included a 70-lap all-star race called the Budweiser Shootout and the season-opening races for NASCAR’s two lower-tier series, the Busch Grand National series and the Craftsman Truck series—plus the preliminaries for the Daytona 500. Unlike other races, the qualifying laps for the Daytona 500 are run a week before the race, and only the first two starting positions are awarded when those timed solo laps are over. Four days later all drivers compete in one of two heart-stopping races known as the Twin 125s (nowadays their official name is the Gatorade Duels), battling for starting position in the Sunday race that will be watched by a quarter-million fans in the stands and millions more on television. I knew the drama of Speedweeks well, but up until this morning I had always experienced the Daytona 500 as a driver. And I can tell you this: for a driver, going to the track on Sunday is like going to war. Other drivers may be your friends and colleagues on any other day, but on Sunday you are going out there against 42 other guys, and every one of them is a threat. Every one of them threatens your livelihood, just as you threaten his. When the announcer calling the race tells the television audience that drivers are “battling for position” on the track, that’s no metaphor. And there is a thrill in that battle that no other experience can match. The feel...
