Auto racing has had its share of prominent lead-foot families, but none in stock car racing has made more headlines or taken more checkered flags than the Earnhardts. Their story begins with patriarch Ralph, who went from cotton mill worker to dirt track demon in the late 1940s and 1950s. From there son Dale Earnhardt Sr., known as the Intimidator, took the torch, and racked up 76 Winston Cup wins driving his famous black No. 3 car before fatally crashing on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Now Dale Jr. carries on the tradition, which author Jay Busbee, who has covered NASCAR racing for Yahoo Sports since 2008, examines with an eye on the family’s role in the circuit’s development and the competitive and sometimes bumpy familial relationships.
Here’s an excerpt from Earnhardt Nation
“If Earnhardt’s career were a Western, by 1999 he’d become the grizzled gunfighter who took a little longer to get going. The new guns in town were faster, but were they craftier?
“Earnhardt’s last championship was nearly half a decade behind him. He’d established a multimillion-dollar empire that included a Lear jet, a home in Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens, and the seventy-four-foot-yacht Sunday Money and the fifty-foot fishing boat Intimidator. A new crop of drivers was gaining on him, and his son was only a year away from his Cup debut. The talk that Earnhardt should think about hanging it up had gone from whisper to suggestion. (Not demand. Never demand.) What could be left for Earnhardt to do but to embarrass himself?
“Plenty, as it turned out. Earnhardt’s knack for thundering a car through a space half its width didn’t decline with age. Nor did his thirst for immediate vengeance upon suffering any insult.”
