Do Not Retire Number Three, and the Loss of Blaise Alexander
Number One belongs to Hoss Ellington and
Donnie Allison.
Number Eleven belongs to Junior Johnson.
Number Eighteen belongs to Joe Gibbs.
Number Twenty-one belongs to the Wood
Brothers and David Pearson.
Number Twenty-two belongs to Glenn
Roberts.
Number Thirty-three belongs to Harry Gant.
Number Seventy-one belongs to Bobby Isaac.
We all know who Number Forty-three belongs
to.
Number Twenty-five belongs to Tim
Richmond.
With that, we start toward the following:
"Now that Richard Childress and Kevin
Harvick have settled on the #29 and a familiar paint scheme, it’s time for
NASCAR to permanently honor Dale Earnhardt."
Of course, with
this opening line from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s October 4 piece, you
know where this is headed.
"I’d like to suggest that Bill France
Jr…..step up to the podium (at the December awards banquet) and announce that
NASCAR will retire the #3 as a tribute to seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale
Earnhardt."
Such would, of course, be unprecedented.
NASCAR has never retired numbers. Ever.
Richard Childress noted at Kansas that
NASCAR owns the numbers. He also understands the dilemma NASCAR faces concerning
availability of numbers. That, though, isn’t quite half of it.
A big part of the argument is that Dale
Earnhardt is synonymous with #3. But getting back to the numbers availability
deal, remember when Richard Childress and Dale Earnhardt both fielded separate
Truck teams in the 1990s? Childress owned #3 and it went with his Truck. Mike
Skinner won sixteen races with #3 and Jay Sauter also won in the Trucks with the
number. Earnhardt’s Truck was numbered 16, and no one had trouble identifying
Ron Hornaday’s mount as a Dale Earnhardt machine. Of course in Grand National
Earnhardt ran #3, but that was years before Childress entered that series. And
Earnhardt didn’t run #3 in Grand National until about 1989 – before that he ran
#8, which belonged to his dad, Ralph Earnhardt. And before he ran #3, Earnhardt
ran #15 with Bud Moore, and ran #2 with Rod Osterlund – to six wins and the 1980
title.
But the bigger argument is more akin to
the "Who’s the better driver?" debate that never ends. "Earnhardt
was the greatest driver in history," is what proponents of retiring #3 will
say. Well, Rusty Wallace was better than Earnhardt on short tracks and road
courses, Tim Richmond was better on road courses and super speedways, Bill
Elliott, Davey Allison, and Ernie Irvan were better on supers with Ernie also
better on road courses, Mark Martin won four IROC crowns before Earnhardt did,
Al Unser Jr. had more IROC wins until the series stopped inviting him, Terry
Labonte’s first Winston Cup title came with a less-moneyed team than Earnhardt
ever had, Rusty Wallace’s title came with a team that was bankrupt – literally;
we now know that in the 1989-90 seasons, Blue Max Racing had to be financed by
first Rick Hendrick and then Roger Penske – Alan Kulwicki won a title with a
self-owned team running with less money than Earnhardt ever ran, and likely
Earnhardt’s last title would have been Ernie Irvan’s but for near-fatal injury.
And don’t start on comparing Earnhardt
with Petty, Pearson, Cale, etc.
"What NASCAR fans will not accept,
judging by the outpouring of emotion following Earnhardt’s death, is another
driver competing with the #3."
That outpouring of emotion lasted at least
seven months too long, and seeing another driver using the number Three isn’t
any different than seeing short trackers such as Stafford’s Jeff Malave and
Larry Vasser running number Threes, or seeing a number Three car in ASA, CART,
ARA, ARCA, etc.
Retiring #3 sets a bad precedent – it
elevates Earnhardt as more special and more worthy of a permanent memorial than
other drivers. The fact is he was not more deserving of such protocol than so
many other drivers. That Richard Petty has seen streets and so forth named in
his honor has not stopped similar memorials to Cale Yarborough, David Pearson,
the Allisons, etc. Petty, though, did not want his number retired, and I don’t
think anyone noticed that when Petty Enterprises fielded a car in Grand National
for Adam Petty, they used #45 while Mike Curb’s team uses #43.
How many people remember who ran #3 before
Earnhardt did? Childress first started using the number in 1976, and in 1983
Ricky Rudd won at Riverside and Martinsville with that number. Before that, Ray
Fox owned the number, and among his winners were David Pearson and Buddy Baker.
In 1971 Richard Howard acquired the number for his new Chevrolet team and
Charlie Glotzbach won at Bristol with it.
And how many people remember #28? Davey
Allison is synonymous with the number, but before he got it Cale Yarborough won
nine races with it, Bobby Allison won with it, Buddy Baker won with it, and the
number was synonymous with Fred Lorenzen and his many wins for years.
Eventually a team will use number Three
and a driver will win the title with that number. Such is the nature of life and
racing. In the future Petty Enterprises may well not use #43, and some other
team will get that number and win with it. That is the nature of life and
racing.
Retiring numbers should not be an option,
because it elevates certain drivers above others equally worthy of permanent
memorial.
Charlotte’s National 300/500 got off to a
horrible start with the death of Blaise Alexander on what turned out to be the
final lap of the ARCA 100 after Winston Cup qualifying. Blaise, at 25, had been
racing in Grand National and ARCA for several years and had won in ARCA
competition.
Blaise’s death reignited
the never-ending safety controversy. "We have a problem," Jeff Burton
said. "We know we have a major problem. And we’ve got to fix that."
Humpy Wheeler erupted, "Enough is
enough. And it’s these stiff front ends, again and again. Something has got to
be done." Humpy also said that he didn’t believe NASCAR officials would
take his pleas seriously.
There’s likely reason for that –
"Some of the anger was directed at NASCAR for (not mandating) something
like the energy-absorbing ‘Humpy’ Bumper," Mike Mulhern wrote. Randy LaJoie
seconds this: "….we need a front bumper on these cars. The Humpy Bumper
wouldn’t have hurt Blaise…after looking at the test last month of that
bumper."
Since that test, however, the bumper’s
data has turned out to be "garbage," in the words of Mike Snow of
Speedway Scene – the only journal I know of offhand that has mentioned that
subsequent Humpy Bumper testing has proven the device to be ineffective.
The campaign for softer front clips
continues, ignoring as it does the death of Neil Bonnett in 1994 with a softer
front clip than today, the death of an ARCA driver at Atlanta in 1998 with the
softer front, the near-fatal injuries to Ernie Irvan with the softer front, the
broken sternum to Andy Farr with the softer front after his 1994 Daytona crash,
the multiple injuries 1997-8 at Atlanta to drivers using these softer fronts,
and so forth. The campaign also ignores the drivers who walked away from savage
hits with these same front clips – such as Tom Carey at Dover in 2000, who hit
so hard he pushed the impact part of the wall back at least three feet, such as
Rusty Wallace and Dave Marcis at Pocono in June 1999, Dennis Setzer at New
Hampshire in July 2000, and onward.
The campaign for soft walls likewise
continues, and of course ignores the near-universal lack of useful cushioning
effect they have provided in real-world crashes. The September 2000 soft wall
test at New Hampshire, involving as it did more realistic conditions – cars were
crashed into soft walls at full speeds – than the PR-oriented Humpy Bumper and
other soft wall tests, should have quieted the soft wall campaign as a truly
viable safety improvement.
The most aggravating part of the safety
crusade is that it ignores the one change that can have a serious impact –
drastically slowing the cars down. There was no need for Blaise and the other
ARCA drivers to be running cars capable of exceeding 160 MPH at Charlotte; they
run 30-second laps at Charlotte where 35-6 second laps ought to be sufficient.
The objection will of course be raised
that drivers can die at 155-60 as well as at 180, and said objection is
manifestly true. But a five-second-per-lap reduction in speed nonetheless does
bring about a lessening of impact severity as well as greater control of the
car. The above-mentioned Tom Carey Dover crash and similar crashes where
concrete walls were ruptured, such as at Charlotte in 1996, Atlanta in 1997, and
Sears Point in 1998, should have shown that these racing vehicles are too fast.
Wheeler and the rest of the sport need to
campaign for slower racecars – it is here that the most impact on safety can be
seen.