Dale Earnhardt "The Day" Part 4 of 5

michael waltrip drove to the winner's circle to celebrate victory in the 2001 Daytona 500 how could he have known at the seminal moment of his career would be forever shrouded in tragedy I know my hey old girl it was amazing people didn't know me a month before now we're all standing in victory lane celebrating winning the greatest race in the world everything was just so cool and it remained that way for probably 20-30 minutes we kept watching on the camera and this looked bad and you can tell by the people around the the car even though it was in a long shot then the ambulance came up and then there was taken out placing the ambulance and then we followed watch the ambulance going to the hospital and the ambulance was traveling virtually at walking pace which meant either a broken back or death another subject michael waltrip finally gets his first one after all these drive anyway very happy for him I just wish he could enjoy it a little more because of busses we just got worried while Earnhardt's driver michael waltrip celebrates Dale Earnhardt rides the back of an ambulance to the Halifax Medical Center the last thing you want to do is overstate the drama of the situation and yet you don't want to understate the possibility that that things could go really bad I was in victory lane and everybody obviously it was a lot of celebration a lot of happy people and thereby seems to be just overly elated and Michael's got the trophies and Michael's being Michael what was beginning to be more and more odd as no Earnhardt was there and I remember thinking where's Dale I mean how come he's not here yet in Bell Junior how come he's not here I'm sure they're coming right John Graham who is the president of racetrack came over he said hey who's going to accept the owners trophy and I said well Dale will be here any minute just Dale trésor when he's something I'll take the trophy and he says nowadays Dale's they're taking Dale over the hospital so for the owners trophy John basically did the victory lane interview with me and then he had me stand in the pictures as soon as we got done with that first photo I looked over and Ken Schrader's walked into victory lane my heat just won Daytona 500 and what a big deal that was such an important moment for him we will make he like a brother and I wanted to tell him what I thought the deal was he made fun of me all the time you know about about not winning and finally there's somebody I know coming to say congratulation I saw him and I said can you believe a traitor I won the Daytona 500 and he just grabbed me and said it's not good and that's like well it's not really that bad that I won the Daytona five cold my he that uh you know we get that I was also happy farming stuff but no listen like we got to be a big problem here extremely worried about tail I remember him looking at me you know and it's just like like it didn't register because you know he waiting for Dale to come in and so that pretty much told me that you know the celebration was over you know what I thought was the greatest day ever was heading in a direction that would make it the the worst day ever by then I'm I don't know what to do I want to go to Victory circle but I don't know if I should and we're on the quick off the the race went long because the red flag and we were to top the hour and so we couldn't stay and give a report about it nobody knew anything they were everybody was real hush-hush about it nobody was telling us anything so we had to go off the air well thanks John we all knew Michael Waltrip had a fast car here in speed weeks I tried to get Darryl both letting Darryl to concentrate on the win on victory lane on analyzing the race and what had happened while I tried to piece together all the information we had so that we didn't say the wrong thing but we also didn't go away leaving people to think that everything was all right we're jubilant for the Waltrip's and our prayers are with the Earnhardt family John I was going to go to Victory circle but my friend Andy Esposito he's a deputy sheriff he was going to take me down through the crowd to get to victory circle so when I when I take off the headset and I turn around he's standing at the top of the stairs shaking his head and big Andy's wife works she worked at the Halifax hospital in the emergency room she had called him and told him to get nee W and get down here and Rollins build it one road led to Victory Lane the other carried a life in the balance the sports biggest day and become a cacophony of celebration and sorrow I couldn't I could I didn't know what to do I don't even you know even to this day I don't know why I went to the hospital I really don't family NASCAR you know although everybody that that needed to be there was there we're and we're just numbers here we're inside and it's not a waiting room outside we are like inside we're not in front of Dale they got Dale's screened off and everything so but we just know it's not ready I can't remember every one it was in room but whoever came me and not to think it was a doctor came in and said we lost Dale I have his son standing next to me there's nobody in this room so what I take your am and we just all sit there and not knowing what to expect next and remember some of us just had our heads down and just it was a bad day I go into the room we're all the team members bad you can have a member just looking at all of their faces and just this junk so mm-hmm so that's kind of where we all were

Channel: XERB1090

Views: 3,337,931

Rating: 4.704277 out of 5

Keywords: yt:quality=high, dale, earnhardt, nascar, winston, cup, sprint, series, auto, racing, death, michael, darrell, waltrip, kenny, schrader, richard, childress, rcr, 2001, daytona, 500, february, 18, the, day, part, bumpsnotes, joseph, foster

Id: kJXZRPfoZhU

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2011