When his racing days are over, Dale Earnhardt has several irons in the fire to keep him busy – including 32,000 chickens, 750 acres of land and hours and hours of autograph requests. (Bill O'Leary - The Washington Post)

By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 12, 1999; Page N1

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Back when Dale Earnhardt was a baby, Junior Johnson's wife, Flossie, used to bounce him on her lap while her husband and Dale's daddy dueled on the dirt banks.

A generation later, a young Kyle Petty, Dale Jarrett and the late Davey Allison played touch football in the infield as their fathers diced down the straightaways. Meanwhile, back in Owensboro, Ky., tiny Michael Waltrip sat on his living room floor, staring at the television set in awe, as his big brother Darrell banged fenders on ABC's "Wide World of Sports".

Family Ties

• The Earnhardts • The Pettys • The Labontes • The Waltrips • The Jarretts • The Gores • The Frances

Stock car racing has long been a way of life as much as a sport, handed down from one generation to the next as it spread from the beaches of Daytona to the Carolina foothills. As NASCAR revs up for its 51st season, that cycle roars on: The man considered the best ever to strap into a stock car – seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt – seems to have produced the sport's next star.

Both take center stage this weekend. Earnhardt returns Sunday as defending champion of the Daytona 500, having finally claimed the one trophy to elude him after 20 years of trying. And on Saturday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. competes in the NAPA Auto Parts 300 as defending champion of NASCAR's Busch Grand National series, the racing equivalent of a Class AAA league, having won its title at age 24.

Earnhardt has devoted his life to speed, but he can't quite grasp – when it comes to his children – that time also passes in a blur.

"It just seems like yesterday he and I were fishing on Lake Norman," Earnhardt said of Dale Jr. "He was a kid and had a big Irish setter named Rocket.

"And we were just having fun. It seemed like, boom, he's messing with race cars. Boom, he's driving 'em. And lo and behold, he started winning races. It seemed like it happened overnight."

As Dale Jr. prepares to step into a limelight of his own, the moment finds Earnhardt, at 47, preparing for the next phase of his life, when he'll retire from driving and become a car owner full-time.

That day isn't here yet, Earnhardt is quick to add. Contracted to race the No. 3 Chevrolet, owned by Richard Childress, through 2000, Earnhardt plans to keep going for at least three more years. He hasn't given up his dream of winning an eighth Winston Cup championship, which would break his tie with Richard Petty and assure him of a legacy all his own.

Not that racing's "Intimidator" needs another credential to claim his place among racing's elite.

He burst onto the scene as NASCAR's top rookie in 1979 and won his first championship the next year. Six titles followed in a stunning run through the late '80s and early '90s. As Earnhardt bumped and shoved his way to victory lane, winning 71 races and more than $33 million in prize money, he became both savior and villain among fans. Half loved him; the rest loved to curse that black car and the man inside.

Stock car racing is littered with families, from Alabama's Allisons to the Waltrip brothers, not to mention the Bodines, Burtons, Jarretts, Labontes, Pettys and Wallaces in between.

"Obviously, there's some genetics involved," said H. A. "Humpy" Wheeler, president of Charlotte Motor Speedway. "There's that, and the fact that this is really a blue-collar sport. And that's what blue-collar people do: They teach their kids to weld if they're a welder or plumb if they're a plumber. Some of the kids make it, and some of them don't."

The Earnhardts' story is about two who did.

The late Ralph Earnhardt was among the South's best short-track racers. When he wasn't competing, he built cars for other people. There was little fame or money in racing then, though his son, Dale, never sensed times were lean growing up in the mill town of Kannapolis, N.C., about an hour north of Charlotte. As a child, Dale rode in the truck as his dad towed the car to weekend races and watched him work under the hood in the garage out back. When he got old enough, he helped.

	The Earnhardts take hold of another trophy – Dale Jr.'s for his '98 Busch win. (Associated Press)

Ralph wasn't much of a talker, but Dale hung on his every word – except the part about staying in school. And Dale found himself, at 18, a husband and father with no diploma, watching the rest of world drive by as he pumped gas and wiped windshields for a living.

All he wanted to do was race. His father never encouraged him. But after Dale talked his way into a part-time ride, Ralph started coaching.

"He really didn't tell me how to drive or what to do, but he showed me what happened when I did get in trouble," Earnhardt recalled. "A guy wrecked me one night, and I remember Daddy said, 'Well, you know, if you'd have just gone on and driven your race car ... but you were checking up, trying to keep him from wrecking you. And you let him wreck you.' And it was true, really."

When Ralph Earnhardt died at 45, suffering a heart attack while working on a car, his life's calling became his son's.

"Basically it was Hard Knocks 101: You learn as you go," Earnhardt said. "I'd watched my dad build engines and race cars. But when he passed away, it was like, I have got to do this. I've got to do this."

By the time Earnhardt made it to NASCAR's big leagues, he was $16,000 in debt for tires and spare parts spotted by men who had either known his father or had faith in his ability. When the money finally started coming in, he settled those accounts.

Last year, Forbes magazine estimated Earnhardt's annual income to be between $19 million and $20 million, most from endorsements and souvenir sales. He also owns a Chevrolet dealership and 750 acres of farmland and real estate in North Carolina's Iredell County, where he keeps registered black Angus cattle, quarter horses and a Perdue farm with 32,000 chickens. He has a 76-foot yacht and keeps two full-time pilots on staff for his helicopter and two airplanes, a Lear jet and a King Air 200.

But when it came to rearing racers, Dale was a lot like his father. All three of his older children showed an interest – Kerry, 29, daughter Kelley, 26, and Dale Jr., 24. Their dad never encouraged them. But once they proved their determination, he gave them some basic equipment, room to work in a shop and left them alone.

Earnhardt also had definite ideas about a racer's development. So the children started as he did, in late-model stocks, which are lighter and less powerful than Winston Cup cars and run mainly on short tracks, where a driver either learns patience or spends the rest of the week banging out dents.

"He was very keen on those kids working on those race cars," Wheeler said. "He wanted them in the shop, and he wanted to see them dirty. And he didn't pay them a lot of money."

Success came most quickly to Dale Jr., who won three races and had 59 top-five finishes in three years on the late-model circuit. He then stepped up to the Busch Grand National ranks, winning seven races and the championship in his first full season. Brother Kerry will join him in that series this season, having signed a two-year deal to race for Doug Taylor Motorsports.

Dale Jr. credits his dad with teaching him some key lessons.

"As far as what he's taught me," Dale Jr. said, "it's just be smooth, keep your head on straight, get to work on time and just to stay dedicated to racing."

Naturally, his father would like to think he passed on some good racing genes, too.

"But I think it's really his desire and his focus on learning – watching his dad, watching his peers do it," Dale Sr. said. "He just dearly wanted to race and had the hunger and desire to be a part of it."

Wheeler, who has watched each generation of Earnhardts, sees more traces of Ralph than Dale in Dale Jr.

"I think we've got a genetic skip here in driving style," Wheeler said. "Dale Jr. is very deliberate, but moves when he needs to. He uses his head a lot and doesn't try to overrun his machine. None of those attributes was his father known for. His grandfather was astonishingly good at staying out of accidents, but that probably had more to do with having to make a living at it when there wasn't a lot of money in it."

	Dale Earnhardt Jr., left, replicated his dad's success by winning the Busch Grand National series title last year. (Bill O'Leary - The Washington Post)

Last year, Budweiser signed Ralph's grandson to a six-year contract worth between $42 million and $50 million. As a result, Dale Jr. is moving out of the trailer on his father's property and into a modest home nearby. He'll have new appliances for the first time.

Like his children, Earnhardt hasn't strayed far from his roots. He lives on a 300-acre farm less than 10 miles from his mother's home. Short of a race track, there is no place he's happier.

He is up most days at 5 a.m., and out the door 10 minutes later to check on farm business. On this January morning, he has dropped off daughter Taylor, 10, at school and been to the doctor's by the time he hops in his black pickup for a tour of the property.

An avid fisherman, Earnhardt drives past the pond stocked with catfish and bream, then winds through the woods, pointing out a hawk's nest and all sorts of wildlife invisible to anyone but him. He stops at the chicken houses to check the egg production, which is logged on a sheet. A steer grazes nearby. "He's fixing to be in the freezer," he says.

Then it's back to the shop, where the crew for his No. 1 Winston Cup car, driven by Steve Park, is practicing pit stops around back. Earnhardt floors it as he bears down on the guys, then yanks the wheel to swerve out of their path just in time. He laughs, climbs out and starts critiquing their work. The right-front tire changer needs to be faster than the right-rear changer, but even without a stopwatch it's clear that's not the case today. Earnhardt delights in pointing this out.

The 108,000-square foot race shop is his crowning business achievement, built to house his two Winston Cup teams (Park's and the No. 8 car Dale Jr. will use in five races this year), a NASCAR truck team and two Busch Grand National teams (Dale Jr.'s and a part-time car for truck racer Ron Hornaday).

Dale Earnhardt Inc. has 135 employees, and the boss stays in constant contact by radio. Hardly 10 minutes passes without him talking into the tiny microphone that's clipped on his shirt and telling someone what to do, whether that is to separate two feuding horses or to fix the skip he just heard in the pit stop practice car before it tears up the motor. î

The shop is positively elegant, its front office furnished in cream and black with accents of gold. There is a huge second-story dining room to entertain sponsors, who can look through windows at the mechanics working on cars below.

Along with the requisite engine shop, machine shop, dynamometer room (for testing the stress on engines) and paint room, there is a full gym and a parts department that's bigger than any auto parts store. There's also an autograph room, where each piece of fan mail is opened, sorted and logged into a computer. Earnhardt spends three hours a week signing autographs and is nearly caught up through September.

In the office of Don Hawk, president of DEI, there are samples of the officially licensed products that have helped build this empire: Dale Earnhardt chewable vitamins and energy bars, commemorative cereal boxes, knives and sets of wrenches, assorted die-cast cars and miniature helmets. Hawk's television stays tuned to ESPN, while his computer scrolls stock listings.

With an 80,000-square foot addition planned, there's enough going on to keep Earnhardt busy – ideally, so busy that he won't miss driving when he retires. Most days, it's hard for him to imagine walking away from the only job he has ever loved. But today, driving around the family farm, he predicts it won't be so bad.

"I'll probably feel good," he said. "I'll feel good about what I've done and feel good about being involved with Dale Jr."