Thursday, August 22, 2019

Shedding light on the situation

I think the year was 1992, and Charlotte Motor Speedway was about to install lights for night racing.

I went over to CMS to talk to promoter Humpy Wheeler about the lights, but I wasn't on Humpy's schedule. So I rode along with him to a funeral and interviewed him along the way.

Humpy suddenly stopped the car and said, "Let me talk to this gentleman," and he got out. The gentleman turned out to be a state trooper, and apparently Humpy was speeding.

He came back after several minutes and told me everything was OK (the trooper had recognized him), and we went on.

When we stopped at a drive-through for a bite, I asked if the speedway was working on anything other than the lights. Humpy told me they were working on building a speedway in Texas.

I thought that was strange (and wondered if he was putting me on), but I mentioned that in my next notes column. It turns out they were working on Texas Motor Speedway.

 At the time, I didn't know I'd just gotten a scoop.




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Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Dale's little-boy look

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Dale Earnhardt was uncomfortable. I was then working on a story for Winston Cup Scene, and Dale was standing on the back of a hauler an hour or so before Winston Cup qualifying.

 I walked right up and asked Dale about his dreams as a driver. I was green and didn't know that no driver (much less Earnhardt) would talk before qualifying. Earnhardt said he couldn't think about it right then, and he learned up against the hauler and turned his head away.

 He looked back at me and realized I was shocked, so he reached down, put his hand on my shoulder and said we'd talk about it some other time.

 Dale didn't qualify that day at North Carolina Motor Speedway (Rockingham), so he and several other drivers had to requalify the next day (probably Friday). Earnhardt put up a good time, and he went into the media center to see how everyone else was doing.

 He saw me and had this little-boy look, like he'd been caught at something. But we didn't say anything to each other.

 It turns out he topped requalifying that day, with Mark Martin second. I believe Dale won a small bet with Mark.

 I didn't get to talk to Earnhardt that weekend; that came the next year at Talladega, and that's a whole different story.

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Friday, August 2, 2019

VROOM! VROOM! VROOM!


IN THE EARLY 1990s, I was at Atlanta Motor Speedway during an ARCA race, and I wanted to go from the infield to the pressbox.

AMS had a walk-through tunnel under the track; it was on the frontstretch then. Several people were ahead of me (and a few were walking the other way) as I headed out.

 I'll never forget the first time the ARCA cars came down the track with me in the tunnel. I heard a high-pitched and super-fast VROOM! VROOM! VROOM! as the cars seemed to go into my right ear and out of my left ear. It was an unbelievable experience, and I couldn't wait to get out of the tunnel.

 I never walked through that tunnel again during a race.




EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  TWITTER: EDITORatWORK

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(the book of great NASCAR stories)

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