Dale Jr. (64:59)
Why? Because he's going to be a big part of our next season of becoming Earnhardt. The 1980 season. Yes, we, we want to do the 1980 year. And I have that scrapbook ready to go. And so we'll get into that maybe in the next installment of the coming Earnhardt. What happens to Suitcase Jake Elder and the racing team? We do know that far beyond the 1980 season, he worked for Robert Yates and was actually fired by Robert Yates and replaced by Larry McReynolds. And he passed away in 2010 after some, some health issues. He dealt with Doug Reichert, who is here for the roundtable, continued to crew chief in the sport for a long time, winning races as recently with Greg Biffle at Roush. And he continues to seek out opportunities to work in the sport. Still feels like he has something to offer. He's also an incredibly good handyman carpenter. If you need something made built, he can do it. One of the things I think we talked about, maybe you don't recall or maybe you missed, Doug showed me a copy of his wedding certificate and dad had signed that as a witness. Dad was his best man also in Doug's wedding. So they were really close. Even after Doug and Dad split up beyond the 1981 season, Doug would go to work at Junior Johnson's with their Waltrips Mountain Dew car and so forth. But they remained close enough friends that dad was his best man. During the wedding in the mid-80s. You know, we talked about the end of the Petty Pearson era where, you know, those two had ran nose to nose, tooth and nail. So many first and second place finishes between Pearson and Petty. All of that came to an end in the 1979 season. That to me, kind of that set that story. I know it, you know it, we've heard it many, many times. But reading through it and living Sort of living through it. I say it really hurt. Hit me on a personal level how I never thought about it like that. You know, you've got these two incredible professionals, no matter what sport, battling each other in so many great matches. And finally it has to end, right? You never love to see it when your heroes, you know, have to hang up the helmet. But not that Pearson was retiring, but that rivalry that had been so good for NASCAR was over. David Pearson would continue to race, but, you know, with very, very limited success after that. He won a few more races and then eventually decided to hang it up for good driving. You know, he's at the end of his career. He's driving cars that really just couldn't get the job done. This was, though, the beginning of the Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt error. And Darrell says as much during the show multiple times. Man, it looks like I'm gonna have to be racing this Earnhardt guy for the rest of my career. And man, they would. It would really come to a head around the, you know, 1986 season when dad and Daryl would wreck Richmond in a, in a massive crash that would give Kyle Petty his first cup win. I have the car that Daryl crashed in that, in that wreck in the, in the race car graveyard. Dad and Daryl would account for six championships throughout the 1980s. The rookie class obviously goes on to be incredible, except Joe Milliken. You know, we'll talk about Joe Milliken a little bit in the next episode of Becoming Our Heart or the next season of Becoming our heart for 1980. But he gets, he gets a few part time rides. One with Ramock in 1981. He eventually gets a ride in the car that would become Rick Hendricks number five car that team would, would end up getting sold to Rick. He makes some sporadic starts though, all the way up until 1987 when he was out of cup altogether. He never had really another full year of competition. From 81 on, where he was in the same car throughout the year in a steady ride. He returned to the late model ranks back at Caraway and some of the weekly race tracks. He had a scary crash at caraway in the 90s and then went on to work for race teams driving transporters and doing things like that for teams like Roush. Actually was involved in a transporter crash in the 2000 and tens with Roush and he's still out there roaming around. We tried really hard to get Joe to come sit down and talk to us or just be able to really pick his brain a little bit about this series, but it was really difficult to make that work. But we are so thankful for his career and his effort in battle through the 1979 season. Terry Labonte, we know is going to go on and win championships is as recent as 1984. I mean, literally five years removed from this season. Terry's a champion. Harry Gant wins a ton of races, obviously becoming a household name. And also, I think it's a little fascinating to me how much the Rookie of the Year deal mattered. Yes, of course, we're embellishing it. We're blowing it up. We're making it a big deal in the show, but it really was that big of a deal back then. The Rookie of the Year battle was something people were so excited about because this really was where there was such a small group of veterans, you know, capable of winning every week, half a dozen, maybe ten cars at times. But there were really a half a dozen good winning cars on the racetrack. And those rookies were exciting. That Rookie of the Year battle was, you know, was always compelling. We lost a little bit of it, its identity over the years, but every once in a while, we get a really good crop of rookies. That fires up the excitement in that Rookie of the Year battle. Obviously, we talk about J.D. stacy now. One of the stories that got cut from the show is about J.D. stacy. He owned the car that Neil Bonnet drove in the late 70s. And they got into dispute with crew chief Harry Hyde. And Harry says, we're parking these cars. I'm not taking them to the racetrack anymore. JD Stacy would go over to Rod Osterlin in 1978. Dave Marcus is Rod's driver. Dad's not there yet. JD and Rod would cut a deal to where Rod Osterlin would put cars on the racetrack that Neil Bonnet would race to be able to finish the 1978 year. That really ticked off Dave Marcus. When Dave Marcus quit, it was as much about the next year trying to share a ride with Dale, with my dad. It was as much as frustration over that. The firing of Dewey. Live and good. And also in 78, he's. He's having this great year. They're running well, and all of a sudden, now they're going to start preparing cars for JD Stacy and Neil Bonnet. Well, that wasn't in the plan. JD Stacy eventually resolves his conflict with Harry Hyde. But in the off season that year, J.D. stacy works in coal business. In the off season that year, J.D. stacy's limo was parked in the parking lot of a Concord hotel. Police found a Bomb underneath that car rigged to explode as soon as the car backed out of its parking spot. And they happen to be just walking by this car. They weren't even, like, looking for this, right? They see the car and they're just like, oh, look, that's a nice limousine. What is that strapped to the bottom of the thing? They get in there and inspect it. They don't know whose it is, whose car it is. J.D. stacy would say this is the second attempt on his life. At that point in time, JD Stacy would lurk in the shadows, if you will, of the NASCAR circuit through 79 and 80. And then in 1981 and 1982, he would buy Rod Oschelin Racing. Dad, obviously getting all this information from Neil Bonnet, says, yeah, I don't need to drive for this guy. I'm quitting. He would quit in two weeks and go drive for Richard Childers. Mid season. In 81, JD Stacy will go to the racetrack and start paying everybody all kinds of money for just to put J.D. stacy on the side of his car. There's like seven or eight cars out on the racetrack with J.D. stacy on the side. And eventually check starts bouncing. People aren't getting paid, and J.D. j.D. Stacy just disappears. Quite an interesting character. Another great story that got cut from the 79 show was Cale Yarborough appearing on the Dukes of Hazzard. Now, this is something that I was a little bit confused by, because I recall when I was a kid, I believe it was in the 1984 year. I remember Cale Yarborough being on that show. And I remember it was right after he had won the Daytona 500 in the Hardee's car. And they actually used a little bit of the clip. Clip of him winning or the in car camera footage or whatever in the. In the Dukes of Hazzard show. Now, I don't know if Cale's been on the show twice or what, but in 1979, in articles, Cale talks about how he's so nervous because he's got to go to Hollywood to shoot an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard. So maybe Cale Yarborough was on there twice. He eventually went to Hollywood, shot his episode in the middle of the 1979 year. And then during one of the final races of the season, the episode ran on like a Friday or Saturday night. And imagine all of the industry probably tuned in. There's probably only like three stations on the television. They tune in to watch Cale on Dukes of Hazzard, do a terrible job of acting, even trying to play himself and then go to the racetrack the next morning and give him a hard time for it. You know, that happen. We also have a interesting thing that we kind of missed. Now I've got this picture, so I apologize for letting this slip. David Pearson drove dad's car in relief for dad while he was injured. They go to Bristol and I made a big deal. Like, man, David Pearson racing at Bristol. He hasn't raced here in a long time. Yeah. And he was older and running a limited schedule. Why would he run this race? It's definitely gonna wear him out. Well, he did get worn out. He got relief driving from Lenny Pond. Lenny was popular for a relief driver back then, but Lenny gets in the car. We've. I've got pictures of this on my phone and I just missed it. And it should have made the show, but pretty cool to know that, you know, Lenny was climbing in everybody's cars back then when they needed help. So during this show, you and I learned more about dad's crash at Pocono and the injuries he dealt with than I even knew. Right. I thought it was broken collarbones. It was much more than that. Well, let me read you an article from the Winston Salem Journal on August 3, 1979. This is a Friday. Rookie Earnhardt out for at least a month. Dylan Hart will be transferred Sunday to a Charlotte hospital from the East Strasbourg, Pennsylvania Hospital, where he's currently in the intensive care unit recovering from injuries from Monday's Pocono 500. Earnhardt, the hottest rookie on the Grand National Tour in several years, has several bruised, several bruises and one broken collarbone, one cracked collarbone, an injured jaw and a concussion. I didn't know about the jaw. And he is expected to be out of action at least until the Capital City 400 at Richmond. While they had some foreshadowing there. And according to Jake Elder, the team's crew chief, because of his jaw injury, Earnhardt is being fed intravenously. Dang. So busted his jaw, I guess. He's got a jaw sewn shut and he's getting fed through a tube. Is that what I'm reading? Sounds like it. But depending on relief driver David Pearson showing here Sunday and the talks next week between team manager Roland Velaka and Pearson of Spartanburg, S.C. the veteran will likely drive the team's cars at Michigan, Bristol and Darlington and perhaps Dover. So Elder says, I went over and saw Dale Monday night. His neck and shoulders were all swelled up and he could only lift his hands just a little. The first thing he said was, I hit Hard. I said, no kidding. And then he asked me, when can I drive my next race? Elder didn't have the heart to tell him. Not for quite a while. This is another neat little tidbit. Bruton Smith, that's Marcus's dad, who's been on the podcast many times, and the owner of Charlotte Motor Speedway, sent his personal plane to Pocono to bring dad back. That's from Elder's mouth. Now, our, you know, the sisters said dad got a commercial plane home, so we really don't know. We could ask Marcus, I guess, but Elder is telling this article that Bruton Smith is sending his personal plane to bring dad back from, from Pocono. And dad will probably check into a hospital for a couple days and let the doctors run some more tests. Darrel saw the crash and he said the tire exploded into a million pieces and the wreck smashed the driver's seat all to pieces and tore the steering wheel clear around and it smashed the roll bars almost clean, metal to metal flat. Now, I don't want Dale to come back too quick or come back too soon, but I do want him to get back in the car as soon as he can. Like getting back on a horse that's thrown you. I know he's going to miss four races. Heck, you can't even run Bristol when you're actually. Well, that place will really get to your neck. In Darlington, Dover's, those are where you plumb out. I figure he ought to be ready to run Richmond if he's able. NASCAR grand national competition director Ray Hill conceded there's a possibility his head brushed the wall based on the crew's review of the accident. A hole was torn in the car's safety window net by the impact, which Doug Reichert, the crew chief, backed up. Earlier in this show, Elder said that Earnhardt has been complaining of pain in the back of his head. So there you go. That, that's just some more information, you know, I mean, you know, we're all still just speculating really what happened in the crash. But dad hit the wall. We do know this. He had to hit the wall flat, driver's side. I thought it was a head on crash or somehow. How did he, how did he move forward in the seat? Did I just assume. The shoulder straps broke the collarbones, but apparently he went to the side, to the left side and without anything on the left side of that seat to stop him from moving toward the door bars and toward the left side of the car. That's when the shoulder harnesses really Kind of just broke the collarbones and did that damage. But he got move. He moved far enough to actually hit his head on, on the wall briefly get him a bad concussion and somehow broke his jaw, which I'm maybe guessing, guessing that he hit his jaw or something on the, on the door top. But you know, just a lot more injuries than, than I'd ever considered. So what is the next stage of becoming Earnhardt? Well, we have the 1980 scrapbook, all right. And we, you know, when we wrote this episode, 1979, I sat down and threw the script together. We did this, as Mike loves to say, we did it backwards. And this came together well and I'm real proud of it. But I think if we do this the right way and write the outline and then bring all the information together and the audio from the races and everything else, it could be so much, so much better as a product easier for you to listen to. So we're excited about that. We're going to do it. The 1987 is going to happen. The 1980 season is going to happen probably next year. We're coming off of the rookie of the year. 1980 is going to be a big year for dad as well. He's going to have more wins. It's the last season of the big bodied race car. They're going to go to the smaller cars in 1981 and I have the car in my possession that dad ran the final race in at 1980 to clinch the championship. That car also won at Atlanta and did several other things throughout the year that we'll talk about. We had the car in our hands pretty cool. So we'll talk about that and let y' all know how that's gonna coming along. But there's a lot of incredible happenings and moments throughout the 1980 season. I don't want to spoil too much, but Jake Elder will not be the crew chief when the team wins the championship. And that split is really, really dynamic. And there's a lot of articles with some pretty telling quotes. Dad and Kale Yarborough get into a bit of a spirited battle not only on the racetrack for the championship, but in the media. There's some quotes and comments from both drivers about their opinions of each other in their driving. So should be a lot of fun. We'll also include obviously the sisters and Doug Reichert for their take and information what they can recall. Now that we know what we're trying to do with this series, I'm telling you, I think 1980 and that season will be even more entertaining. So until then, I hope you've enjoyed our look back on the 1979 year becoming Earnhardt. Came out of some scrapbooks that my aunt made with love and it's been incredible to create something with those. And I've really enjoyed the feedback that everybody has given us. And I hope you know it's an evergreen series. If you enjoyed it now, you can share it with friends, they can listen to it in full, have some fun with it and keep, keep the stories out there. Like my aunt said, keep, keep telling the stories and keep sharing with people some of the cool things that happened in my dad's career. But NASCAR as well. We'll see you next time on Becoming Earnhardt. Check out dirty mo media. Check out dirty mo media on twitter, facebook, tick tock and.