The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [61]
2001 PEPSI 400
There is nothing more dramatic than a good father and son story, and NASCAR has a history filled with them. But nothing equaled what happened in July 2001 at the Pepsi 400, when Dale Earnhardt, Jr. won the first race to be held at the Daytona International Speedway since his father—and racing legend—was killed in the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
Conspiracy theorists can’t stretch their imagination enough to figure out how “in a late charge from seventh to first, Earnhardt’s car seemed to defy the laws of physics on a track where carburetor restrictor plates limit horsepower and almost always keep drivers close.” That’s according to the Associated Press’ Eddie Pells, writing on July 11, 2001. Rusty Wallace said, following the race, “I can’t think of a better script to play than to come back to the track that took his father away from him. To have him be able to honor him with the victory is pretty cool. I wish I would have been the one shoving him across the line. I almost was.” (Michael Waltrip actually was.)
Chris Jenkins wrote in USA Today:
It’s one of the touchiest subjects in NASCAR, and it almost never comes up while cameras and tape recorders are rolling. Privately, some drivers and teams suspect that NASCAR officials show favoritism to Earnhardt, Jr. in his biggest races. Earnhardt, Jr. only recently stopped seething about a comment from driver Jimmy Spencer, who questioned the legitimacy of his emotional Daytona win in 2001. Spencer said immediately following the race, “I knew going in [that] the No. 8 car was going to win the race. Something was fictitious.... I mean, you know, it’s not ironic the No. 8 car would win at all.”
Spencer now says that Dale Jr. has won so many restrictor plate races, he no longer thinks the July 2001 race was fixed.
A restrictor plate is a device used to limit the car engine’s power. The restrictor plates used in NASCAR reduces engine power from approximately 750 hp to approximately 430 hp. It’s apparently much easier to fix a restrictor plate race than other races, where speed isn’t controlled. Teams will work an entire year to gain one extra horsepower, but if NASCAR gives you a plate with 1/32 of an inch bigger hole in the restrictor plates, you can gain as much as ten more horsepower than your competitors, which is a huge advantage.
They only run restrictor plate races at the Daytona and Talledega race tracks. That’s because cars were getting airborne when racing over 200 mph there. Officials saw the need to slow them down, after Bobby Allison flipped, hit the catch-tents, and his car came within only seven feet or so of winding up in the stands. So, it is more for the safety of the fans than the drivers that they began using plates. Why just those two tracks? Because the danger isn’t so great at the other tracks. One of the fastest tracks is in Atlanta, where turns can be taken around 205 mph, but that’s still not as fast as the turns that were being taken in Daytona and Talledega. With the plates, speeds are closer to 190 mph there.
“No fewer than a half-dozen newspaper columnists wrote about the ‘wink-wink, nod-nod’ aspects of the result,” in the words of Tampa Tribune columnist Martin Fennelly. “You don’t go by yourself on the outside and make that kind of time up,” Johnny Benson said of Earnhardt’s late-race push to the front. “But it’s okay. It was good that Junior won,” wrote Eddie Pells.
MY OPINION
It seems an awful lot like a movie. At Daytona, cars usually need