DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Memorial Day weekend has long been a celebration of auto racing. It can't come fast enough this year for a sport that has endured a difficult three months.
In the nation's heartland next Sunday, 33 drivers will compete in America's most famous racing spectacle, the Indianapolis 500. That night, stock cars take center stage under the lights in North Carolina for the Coca-Cola 600, one of NASCAR's biggest races.
But while the racing goes on and more fans are watching than ever, not all is well in the sport that has been irrevocably altered by the death of Dale Earnhardt at the Daytona 500 and its aftermath.
"We lost a piece of our hearts on Feb. 18, and those hearts were already a little tender based on what happened last year," said NASCAR's director of operations, Kevin Triplett. "But as far as health of the sport, things are going well. Are they going as well as they were Feb. 17th? No. That's not going to be the case for a while."
The death of the man known as The Intimidator is merely the start of a list of racing's woes.
Earnhardt was the fourth NASCAR driver to die in a nine-month span. On April 29, CART was forced to cancel a race in Fort Worth, Texas, for safety reasons. The previous night, a fiery, 11-car crash in an IRL race reminded fans of the extreme danger involved at all of auto racing's venues, even though it didn't result in major injuries.
As a result, the sanctioning bodies in auto racing have been under unprecedented scrutiny. More than ever, they're fighting to maintain the confidence and support of both fans and drivers.
"If a driver loses trust over this deal, they shouldn't be here anymore," said former NASCAR driver Donnie Allison, who suffered a terrible head injury in a 1981 wreck in a NASCAR race at Charlotte. "NASCAR doesn't want to hurt its drivers, and every one of us knows that."
Still, since Earnhardt's death on the final lap of the Daytona 500, NASCAR has been accused of a multitude of conspiracies as it meanders through its slow investigation.
A week after the death, NASCAR thought it was helping drivers by telling them and the public that the seat belt in Earnhardt's car had separated. That raised more questions than it answered.
Although NASCAR never blamed the seat belt for the death, for a brief period the announcement shifted focus away from the theory that the much-publicized Head and Neck Support Device would have saved Earnhardt's life.
