Showing posts with label Winston Cup Media Tour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winston Cup Media Tour. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

RICHARD PETTY WITHOUT THE HAT


RICHARD PETTY WITHOUT THE HAT

YEARS AGO, we were on the Winston Cup media tour in Charlotte, and the tour was visiting with Darrell Waltrip in Uptown Charlotte.

DW was announcing his silver No. 17 car, and there were a bunch of famous drivers in attendance, guys named Jarrett, Petty, Pearson and Earnhardt, to name four. Waltrip was big-time, too, with three Cup championships. Those five drivers had 22 Cup titles among them.

After the presentation, I went to the front and was talking to Jeff Hammond, Waltrip's crew chief then, and someone else was talking to DW.

Suddenly, someone taller than me put his left arm around my right shoulder, and I looked up at Richard Petty shaking hands with DW. Richard, sans cowboy hat and wearing a sports coat, pulled DW and me into a sort of a group hug, and Hammond said he wished he had a camera.

I said I wished he had one, too. And I did. It's a cherished memory.

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Saturday, April 29, 2017

The pig on the media tour

We were on the Winston Cup Media Tour in the early to middle 1990s, and we'd stopped at a business that provided racers with safety products.

 One of the workers there had a pot-bellied pig, and for some reason a handful of women on the tour wanted to pet the pig. I looked around, and they had it trapped at the top of a short set of steps in front of a closed door, and the pig was terrified.

 The pig got away for a moment, then did something extraordinary. It knocked down a display to cause its own distraction. While the women were retreating a few feet, the pig made its getaway.

 Don't say that pigs aren't smart.

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Saturday, April 22, 2017

Two Dales on the media tour

We were on the annual Winston Cup Media Tour one year, around 2000, and I assume it was Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s first tour.

We were going from shop to shop, and we were at Dale Earnhardt Inc. The media members immediately spread out. Some were talking to DEI executive Ty Norris or one of the crew chiefs, something I probably did. A bunch were swarming around Earnhardt, and the rest were attracted to Junior.

Before joining the fray, I watched both Earnhardts for a minute.

Earnhardt, by then a veteran at meeting the press, was answering questions but also watching his son. All I could see of Junior was his face, with a halo of tape recorders around it. Dale looked calm in a storm of questions, and Dale Jr. appeared almost overwhelmed in a similar cyclone.

Welcome to the big time, Junior.

Fortunately, it got easier. I saw Dale Jr. at Rockingham that same year, and he looked more comfortable. Of course, he didn't have 50 microphones and tape recorders stuck in his face at one time, either. Maybe 15 or 20.

And by now it's probably no big deal ... as it was with his father.

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Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Rough landing

TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY

In the 1990s, the Winston Cup Media Tour was flying back to Charlotte from Texas on a large airplane. We'd been visiting the just-built Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.

 We were having trouble landing, probably from ice on the wing; I'm not sure. Anyway, a lot of sports writers were asleep. Suddenly, it felt like we were floating, then we dropped and went WHAM!

 I was awake on the left side of the packed plane, holding my laptop in my arms.

 A sleeping friend of mine in the back of the plane was startled to awaken to an air mask hitting him in the face. He and a few others probably felt a few moments of panic.

 Cup driver and pilot Mike Wallace, who was flying with us, told us the pilot was overshooting the landing strip, so he stalled the plane. That's why we felt the drop and the wham.

 I've flown since then, but I'm always happy when we land safely.

 And I think of that landing every time someone mentions TMS.

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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com   TWITTER: EDITORatWORK
More entries from TARJ
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

EDITOR@WORK blog entries 

Entries from The Dog Blog

More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie
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