By Larry Woody
The Tennessean
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sterling Marlin says he knows how racing rival Dale Earnhardt would have described Sunday’s fatal crash in the Daytona 500:
 |
| Sterling Marlin said Dale Earnhardt may have slowed "a little bit" before the crash at Dayton that killed Earnhardt.
Associated Press |
"As Dale has told me before in similar situations, we just ran out of real estate down there."
Then again, Marlin doesn’t know why he is taking the brunt of some NASCAR fans’ wrath, especially on the Internet.
"Maybe it’s from some people who are frustrated and looking for somebody to blame," Marlin said. "I’ve had a lot of people call and tell me, ‘Man, you didn’t do anything wrong.’ That’s meant a lot."
Those were just some of the thoughts of the Columbia, Tenn., stock-car driver as he conducted his first press conference since the Earnhardt tragedy.
Marlin has been in the spotlight since the tragic crash because his car appeared to make contact with Eardhardt’s No. 3 Chevrolet.
Speaking at The Tennessean offices, from where he also conducted a national teleconference, Marlin said he avoided the media on Monday, "because it was just too fresh and too tough. I didn’t know what to say."
Marlin said the fourth-turn crash "was nobody’s fault. You just had a bunch of fast cars running hard and something happened — the air got off the (Earnhardt) car or something. It was a sad, sad, deal, but it was one of those racing deals."
Earnhardt was running third at the time of the crash, as Michael Waltrip — driving for Earnhardt — and Dale Jr., began to pull away from the rest of the field. It appeared that Earnhardt might have checked up a bit, possibly in an attempt to block the drivers behind him from making a move on the two frontrunners. Did Marlin sense that Earnhardt slowed?
"A little bit," he said. "I had to get off the throttle."
But he added: "I don’t know what was going through Dale’s mind, but it’s hard for me to believe that he was content to run third. He never had been."
Marlin said bumping competitors out of the way is common stock car racing strategy, but only on short tracks (less than a mile in length) where the speeds are not excessive.
"On a short track you can beat and bang, but not on a superspeedway," he said. "Not at those speeds. There’s no way in the world I’d do that. I know the consequences. I definitely didn’t do anything intentional. Everybody was just racing their guts out in the Daytona 500."
NASCAR has announced that this Sunday’s race at Rockingham, N.C., will proceed as scheduled, and Marlin said, "that’s the way Dale would have wanted it. I was talking to one of Dale’s PR people a while back and he said they were out working around the barn one day and Dale told him, ‘Look, if I get killed in a race car, I don’t want people crying and moping around.’
"He’d want us all to go out there Sunday and race 400 miles as hard as we could. I’d like to dominate the race, win it, and dedicate it to Dale and his family."
Marlin said the tragedy will hang over the sport for a long time.
"It’ll be on our minds the whole year," he said. "Dale Earnhardt WAS NASCAR, and he had a tremendous amount of fans. We’ll do our best to go on."
As for those who have tried to pin the blame on him, Marlin merely asks: "If people will come to their senses and just watch the tape, there’s no question about what happened. That’s all I ask."
[back to top] |
