February 18, 2001 -Daytona Beach, Fla.
The crowd has gone completely silent. You could almost hear a pin drop. This never happened at the end of this race. Just silence.
Mark Lewis just sits there at the edge of the stage in Victory Lane, his head in his hands. He looks up briefly and sees me scooting around to the side (like I’m not supposed to).
“Chuck, get back on the riser, will ya?” He puts his head back down in his hands. I don’t get it. Mark is one of the key media-wranglers at the Daytona International Speedway, a ball of energy, and is usually juggling a bunch of things at once during the Sunday of the Daytona 500. Even after it’s over. It’s his job to direct the winning team, the sponsors, the owners, the media and everyone else inside Victory Lane in order to move everything (including the ‘hat dance’) along. It’s a fluid operation that he always gets done. But for now, he’s just sitting there. Something’s wrong.
“Let’s change things up a bit,” sports anchor Todd Lewis said a few hours earlier. “Chuck, I want you in Victory Lane. Get the winner driving across the start-finish line then get in there. Tee and I will get post-race sound from the other drivers.” Fine with me. Working the corner office is fun for a while but I look forward to this change. Should be easy. I (and a group of others) interview Jeff Gordon following a wreck off turn three. He’ll return to the race but he’s 22 laps down. Then I set up my tripod at our designated spot on the TV-camera riser in Victory Lane and run a cable from it to the mult-box. I’ll come back later and plug it into my camera to get the winner’s comments fed from the NASCAR audio feed.
As the race is ending, the crowd is on its feet and you can hear a lot of cheering. I look at the position pole which had the number-3 in third place behind 15 and 8. Looks like a sweep for DEI. The MRN announcers are yelling about something but I can’t make it out. I climb to the top of the risers in VL and catch the #15 coming across the finish line with the #8 right behind. There don’t seem to be any cars behind them for a bit and since I have what I came for I step back down a few levels and snap my camera onto my tripod plate. Audio cable. Audio cable. What happened to my audio cable? It’s black. So is everyone else’s. Can’t find it now. Someone must have kicked it away from my tripod. It happens.
The gate is opening and winner Michael Waltrip will be driving in. Where’s my damn audio cable? I think it’s over there. There are a million people on this row. Just what I need. I’m stooping under my tripod and trying to pick up an unattached cable which is connected at the other end to the mult-box. I hope. It’s mine now. Click. Vroom!!
Waltrip drives in and his crew and sponsors are there to meet him. There’s still pandemonium but I can’t make out what’s happening so let’s just get this over with. Michael emerges from his car but he doesn’t seem joyous. He does his talk with Fox commentator (I think it was Mike Joy). I can’t really hear it. He DOES congratulate his crew and they are happy.
He comes up to the podium eventually and starts saying the strangest stuff. “I just hope Dale’s okay.” he says. Dale? Earnhardt? Why? What happened to him?
“I couldn’t see what happened but they were still working on his car when I went around again.”
Okay, Dale wrecked. Sorry, I didn’t know. But he’s wrecked here before and survived. No biggie. Except that the crowd, some 200,000 race fans, is quiet. Really, really quiet. Hmmm. Their attention is focused at the infield near turn-4. That’s where Sterling Marlin tapped Earnhardt from behind on the last lap and sent him, at first, down to the apron then up the track into the wall. Rescue crews rushed to the area and they’re still there. But now they’re not moving very fast. And reporters in the Victory Lane are asking Waltrip if he heard anything more. And more reporters are pouring in. WTF?
NASCAR wants this ‘celebration’ to wrap up. Now. Bye. Mark Lewis, a secret-service-type earpiece and microphone attached to him, is giving his assistants the ‘wrap’ sign and sits down by the side of the stage. I move off my tripod and walk to the side of the stage to try to get a better idea of what’s going on.
“Chuck, get back on the riser, will ya?”
A short time later, Waltrip’s car is pushed back out, on it’s way to Daytona USA for the year. Usually, the celebration runs longer. This is not good. I wanna know what’s going on so I head out of Victory Lane to our satellite truck parked about a hundred feet away. I pass Rick. He’s a photographer for WDTV in West Virginia. He’s been down here all week.
“He’s dead,” he tells me while passing by. I just stop and stare as he walks away. Damn. You know, that feeling you get when you look around and things seem different for some reason? The place is the same but the way people are moving is different. Everyone’s just trying to get things packed up and moved out quickly. No one seems happy as is usually the case after the Daytona 500 ends. Rick’s words ring in my ears.
Todd and Tee are back from the garages, and Todd is on the phone. Our satellite truck operator is hooking up more cables in anticipation of the onslaught of live-shot’s he’s about to do. Tee sets the camera down. “Everybody back there is crying,” he says of the Earnhardt crew, “Just bawling.”
“Julie,” says Todd to weekend news producer Julie Nasser, “This seriously needs to be your lead. I mean it.”
It starts to sink in. Eventually Tee heads over to the Benny Kahn to get NASCAR President Mike Helton’s announcement about Earnhardt’s death while I set up in Victory Lane for Todd’s live hit at the top of our 6:30newscast. We set up a second live venue outside Victory Lane for sports reporter Dina Falco as well. Behind her is an American flag at half-staff. Back at the sports office is Sports Director Ryan Baker and sports editor Scott Engles, putting together footage of the race from Fox Sports and monitoring the wires for additional information. We all go live at the top of the show and during the sports segment. After 7:00, I stick around and we get fan reaction from the infield. A crowd has gathered at turn-4 here as well as outside. The area has become a memorial to Earnhardt with fans leaving signs, candles, t-shirts and what-not. Our nightcrew from Orlando is on its way to package that scene for 11:00. The last of the stunned fans has left the grandstands. A stringer has shot video from Halifax hospital of the ambulance slowly pulling up & family arrival afterward and has microwaved it back to our station in Orlando. We get footage of Earnhardt’s hauler pulling out making it’s way to Interstate-95 and back home to North Carolina.
The track has settled into an eerie darkness.
For the next few hours, he just start putting together our 11:00 stories and watching as the NASCAR landscape begins to change forever.
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