Racing hurt? Earnhardt was hardly only one ready, willing

TOM HIGGINS' SCUFFS

Friday, Aug. 07, 2009

Ricky Rudd’s race car spun off the fourth turn at Daytona International Speedway, slid into a grassy area and then began flipping violently.

It was a horrifying wreck, taking place in the Busch Clash, a NASCAR special event for the previous season’s pole winners.

After flipping seven times on Feb. 12, 1984, the Ford fielded by Bud Moore appeared to be higher in the air than a power pole. From there it twisted around twice while still airborne and nosed into the ground.

There was great fear for Rudd’s life.

Miraculously, Ricky escaped with serious bruising of almost his entire body, including the face. His eyes were blackened and quickly swelled shut.

There was speculation that Rudd would be sidelined from Winston Cup Series competition for several races.

Not exactly.

Just four days later he was back in a race car, running in a 125-mile qualifying race leading to the Daytona 500.

NASCAR officials were unaware that he competed in that event—and the 500 on Feb. 19 as well—with his eyes taped open!

Rudd finished seventh in both races.

On Feb. 26 Rudd was still hurting badly. His eyes remained so black that someone remarked that “Ricky looks like a raccoon.”

Nevertheless, Rudd, his eyes like slits, not only ran in the Miller 400 at Richmond, the native Virginian won. He overtook Darrell Waltrip and led the final nine laps.

Rudd’s feat of fortitude ranks high among the top “tough man” performances in NASCAR history.

I’m recounting Ricky’s profile in courage and determination as a followup to a blog, or column, I wrote last week about the toughness of the late Dale Earnhardt.

Some readers pointed out that among NASCAR drivers, Earnhardt wasn’t alone in this regard.

They’re right.

One reader wrote in response to cite Richard Petty and Bobby Allison as examples. They are great ones.

Petty once drove several races with a broken bone in his neck. Perhaps showing even more grit, during the early 1970s King Richard ran the Daytona 500 only a few days after having a sizable portion of his stomach removed because of ulcers.

Petty’s doctor forbade him to go to Daytona.

“I’m gonna run and you can’t stop me,” declared Petty.

Allison, making a special appearance, once was injured so badly in a short track race in Wisconsin that he couldn’t get in and out of his NASCAR ride.

So Bobby had what amounted to handles sewn onto his uniform so that two teammates could lift him into the car.

The toughness trait shown by many competitors goes back to the sanctioning body’s earliest years.

Here are some examples I remember:

In May of 1955 Herb Thomas, one of NASCAR’s biggest stars, ran into a deep rut in the dirt track at Charlotte Speedway, a three-quarter-mile oval.

His car began flipping and Thomas was thrown from the vehicle. He suffered serious back injuries, a broken leg, a concussion and deep bruising to both shoulders.

Thomas’ doctors predicted he would be sidelined for six months. Thomas scoffed.

Herb was right.

As racing historian Greg Fielden recounts in his great series of books on NASCAR, Thomas returned to action on Aug. 7 at the Forsyth Fairgrounds in Winston-Salem.

Thomas triumphed in his third race back, winning on Aug. 20 at a one-mile asphalt track in Raleigh.

Then, just as Thomas had predicted from his hospital bed four months earlier, he took stock car racing’s biggest show of all at the time, the Southern 500 at South Carolina’s Darlington Raceway. Driving a Chevrolet, he won the classic for the third in its sixth running.

Unbelievably, compared to what we see in races nowadays, Thomas did it by covering the entire 500 miles without changing tires.

In 1986 Harry Gant was involved in a savage crash with Buddy Arrington during the Miller 500 on June 8 at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania.

Doctors at the track released Gant on the promise that he’d go to a hospital upon arriving back home in Taylorsville, N.C.

However, Gant became in severe pain before he could fly out on a private plane. He was hospitalized in Wilkes-Barre, where it was determined he’d suffered a bruised heart and lungs, other bruise-related injuries and a concussion.

Arrington also sustained a concussion and was hospitalized at Allentown, Pa.

Gant wasn’t released until June 11.

Two days later he was at Michigan International Speedway, where he qualified third for the Miller 400.

Gant, driving the famed “Skoal Bandit” Chevrolet, led quite a bit in the 200-lap race on the 2-mile track. He was ahead as late as Lap 195.

Then, Bill Elliott whipped into first place and edged Harry at the checkered flag by two car lengths.

“Now,” said Leo Jackson, Gant’s team owner and crew chief, “we’ve got broken hearts to go with Harry’s bruised one. But we’re so proud of him. That was a man out there driving today.”

On April 14, 1992, Sterling Marlin crashed in the first turn at Bristol International Raceway during the Valleydale 500 when an oil line broke on his Ford.

His car became a fireball.

“When I felt the heat and saw the flames, I just automatically covered by face and tried not to breathe anything in,” Marlin recalled later. “I hoped the car would hurry up and stop so I could get out of it. It was getting warm.”

Marlin suffered burns to his face, shoulders and inner thighs.

Sterling was hurt so seriously that he was taken to the Vanderbilt University Burn Center in Nashville for treatment.

There, he expressed such determination to start the First Union 400 at North Wilkesboro Speedway on April 21 that his team of doctors reluctantly relented.

Junior Johnson, Marlin’s team owner, had left the decision up to Sterling.

One of the doctors flew in a private plane with Marlin to North Wilkesboro on April 20 so the driver could take a mandatory practice lap.

The plan was for Sterling to run one lap, then the veteran Chargin’ Charlie Glotzbach would take over in a relief role.

On race day, Marlin, essentially wrapped like a mummy, was led to his car on pit road, obviously in much pain.

He gingerly was assisted into the machine.

Marlin ran his one lap, pitted, and just as gently was removed from the cockpit.

He left the race track as soon as possible to fly back to Nashville and the burn center.

Why do injured drivers put themselves through what has to be excruciating torment?

It’s the great importance of earning points toward the NASCAR season championship, or at least a lucrative finish high in the final standings.

Marlin explained:

“It might mean a million dollars (then the champion’s share).

“If we wound up at the end of the season and could have finished real high in the points, well, if I had laid in a hospital bed instead of even trying, I’d have felt awful, both for myself and the team.

“There was never any second thought in my mind about doing it.”

Through the years this mentality among the drivers has led some observers with ties to NASCAR to suggest that its officials need to protect the competitors from themselves.

The idea generally has been to let them discard their two or three worst finishes - or non-starts - when counting points.

The thought has gone nowhere with NASCAR, and it won’t. A few years ago the wife of one driver amusingly assessed the competitors’ obsession with “playing hurt.”

“I’ve lived with my husband for many years,” she said. “And like a lot of the other drivers he’s too lazy to get off the couch to get a glass of water.

“But they’re never hurt too bad to crawl into a race car on Sunday.”

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