Motorsport · 2001 · Daytona Beach, USA
The Day NASCAR Lost 'The Intimidator'
Running third and blocking for his own drivers on the final lap of the Daytona 500, seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt hits the wall, and NASCAR safety changes forever.
Final lap (200)
Lap of crash
7 (career)
Cup Series championships
HANS device, Car of Tomorrow
NASCAR safety reforms that followed
Dale Earnhardt, a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion nicknamed 'The Intimidator', was running third on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, holding a path open for his own team's cars, driven by Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who were first and second. His black No. 3 Chevrolet made contact with another car, was clipped again, and hit the outside wall almost head-on.
By the standards of NASCAR wrecks it did not look especially severe on television, and it took time for the scale of what had happened to become clear. Earnhardt was pronounced dead from a basilar skull fracture, the same type of injury that had killed several other drivers across motorsport in the preceding years.
It happened on the sport's biggest stage in front of an enormous television audience, and the changes came quickly: mandatory head-and-neck restraint devices, the redesigned safety structures of the 'Car of Tomorrow', and a wholesale rethinking of barrier technology at ovals across the country. Nobody in American motorsport is mourned more.
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