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Tuesday, February 20
Marlin receives hate mail, threats
Associated Press
Sterling Marlin was stunned when he returned home after the Daytona 500 and found he was being blamed for starting the crash
that killed Dale Earnhardt.
|  | | Sterling Marlin tapped Dale Earnhardt's car moments before the Intimidator's crash. |
"The first thing, you go in and turn the news on and some
reporter is on TV saying that ... the vicious tap that I gave Dale
Earnhardt sent him into the wall," Marlin said. "You just want to
climb right into the TV and pull the guy out of there."
That was just the beginning of the storm.
Monday, the day after the fateful race, Marlin's Web site was
bombarded by ugly e-mail. Threats against him and his family were
phoned to his race shop in Mooresville, N.C.
"Maybe people are frustrated and just looking for somebody to
blame. I'd do anything to not be here today, to not address this
subject," said Marlin, speaking for the first time since the
racing world learned of Earnhardt's death Sunday night.
"If people just come back to their senses, listen to what
everybody's saying and watch the tape, that's all I ask," he said
by telephone from his home in Columbia, Tenn.
Earnhardt was killed on the last turn of the last lap of
NASCAR's season-opening race, slamming head-on into the concrete
wall after making contact with Marlin at the front of a tight pack
of five cars fighting for position.
"I definitely didn't do anything intentional. We were just
racing our guts out on the last lap of the Daytona 500," said
Marlin, a two-time Daytona 500 winner who was longtime competitor
and friend of Earnhardt's.
"I've only seen the tape once, but from what I saw, it was a
totally racing accident," he said. "Kenny (Schrader) pulled up to
make it three-deep going in, with me on the bottom.
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Maybe people are frustrated and just looking for somebody to blame. I'd do anything to not be here today, to not address this subject.” |
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—Sterling Marlin |
"Some other guys were closing fast and I think Rusty (Wallace)
got up on him and got him loose. Dale and my car barely touched,
and it sent my car across the apron, and Dale's, too. He
overcorrected and then I didn't see him again."
Marlin somehow kept his car going straight and went on to finish
fifth in the season-opening race.
"It was pure luck I caught it," he said. "When you run across
the apron at Daytona at 180 miles an hour, you usually don't come
back."
Earnhardt didn't, sliding into Schrader. The two of them then
slammed into the wall. The 49-year-old Earnhardt, a seven-time
Winston Cup champion and the greatest driver of his era, died
instantly of massive head injuries.
Almost immediately, the threats and e-mails started for Marlin.
Chip Ganassi Racing team spokeswoman Gigi Liberati declined to
go into detail about the phone calls and electronic messages, and
she declined to say what kind of security measures have been taken.
"You have to look at every threat as serious. I obviously can't
go into detail about what will be done, but there will be
precautions," she said.
A patrolman was on duty outside the Ganassi race shop all day
Tuesday.
By Tuesday, however, Marlin said the hate mail had slowly turned
to messages of support.
"I didn't look at the computer, but I heard it did have some
pretty bad stuff on it," he said. "Today, I heard it was all
reversed. The calls I got, there wasn't a negative call from
anybody."
Like Marlin, Wallace has been shaken by The Intimidator's death.
"He and I were about as close friends as you can get in our
sport, with the competition and all that goes along with it," said
Wallace, who avoided the sliding cars in Sunday's race and finished
third. "I just keep on running that last lap in my mind and keep
saying to myself, 'Man, if I'd just been able to give him a little
tap from the rear ... that could have meant all the difference in
the world.' It's just a helpless feeling I have."
Marlin agreed with NASCAR's decision to go on with the race in
Rockingham, N.C., on Sunday.
"Dale would want everybody to go and give it 100 percent," he
said. "In part, I dread it. But, once you're in the car, nobody is
messing with you. Dale had been doing this since he was a kid, and
so have I. Getting in that race car is what we do."
Although no one was seriously injured in the other wreck in
Sunday's race -- a 19-car pileup that looked far more dangerous than
the accident that killed Earnhardt -- new aerodynamic rules put in
place by NASCAR to tighten up on-track competition have come under
scrutiny.
Marlin said he likes the fact that, with the new aero package
for Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR's longest and
fastest ovals, cars can pass and don't have to stay in long lines
lap after lap.
On the negative side, it keeps the field bunched up at high
speed, and one small slip by one driver can lead to disaster.
"I stayed awake all Sunday night trying to think how you'd fix
it," Marlin said. "Maybe we could sit down with some drivers and
(NASCAR president) Mike Helton and them and try to fix it."
The subject came up again Tuesday in a telephone conversation
between Marlin and fellow driver Jeff Burton.
"He said, 'How you going to fix it? You've got to fix it
somehow.' " Marlin said. "They've got to get some way that the
best cars that handle good can separate ... from the cars that
don't handle good."
The debate continues to rage over the use of the Head And Neck
Support device (HANS), which is worn around the neck and is intended
to keep the driver's head from flying forward and hyperextending
after a hard impact.
Only a handful of drivers are using it.
Although he has issues with how the HANS device would affect his
field of vision while racing and his exit from the car in an
emergency, Marlin said, "I'm going to look at it and try it. I
think all the drivers will."
As for Sunday's race, Marlin said, "I'd like to go to
Rockingham, dominate the race, win and dedicate it to Dale and his
family."
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