Race Fan's Reflections ~ Ernie Irvan
1/08/2014 Jim Fitzgerald
When he
awoke on the morning of Friday, August 19th, 1994, Ernie Irvan was
rather close to the top of the stock-car racing world. He was tied for the lead in series wins at
three with Dale Earnhardt, and trailed the then-six-time Champion by a mere 27 points
in the Championship standings. Later
that morning, after a crash in a practice session for the race at Michigan,
Irvan was critically injured, clinging to life, and given only a ten percent
chance to survive. That,
however, is not where this story ends, nor begins, for that matter. It does begin on January 13th,
1959, when Vic and Jo Irvan became the parents of Vergil Earnest Irvan, who was
born in the state of California. Vic ran
a junkyard during the day and ran laps around tracks on weekends and
nights. As is the case with many a race
car driver, it ran in the family, so it was only eight years after he was born
that Ernie Irvan, one of four children for Vic and Jo Irvan, had his first race
car, which his father taught him how to maintain and repair. By the time he was fifteen years old, the
young Irvan had won the California Championship, and then in his class finished
second nationwide in the karting championships.
Stockton 99
Speedway was Irvan’s home for the next few years, as well as the 1/3-mile ring
in Madera, and Irvan actually skipped his High School Graduation ceremony to go
racing. Then Irvan made the big move
that would change his life. In 1982,
Irvan executed the Alan Kulwicki maneuver, packed up what he could, tossed it a
pick-up truck and drove to North Carolina, with his race car in tow. Irvan only had $700.00 in his pocket. He stopped in Las Vegas on the way and added
$200.00 to his total with some lucky gambling. The next
part of the story is a bit of well-known NASCAR lore. In order to make ends meet, Irvan took a job
welding seats at, of all places, Charlotte Motor Speedway, as well as any other
odd jobs he could find, such as repairing and building race cars for
others. However, when he was behind the
wheel, it was at Concord Speedway, which slightly resembles a small version of
Pocono, where Irvan was quick to pile up more than a dozen wins over two
seasons. Five years
after moving to North Carolina, and at the age of 28, Irvan would finally make
a Winston Cup Series start. The year
before, he connected with Marc Reno, a car builder, and had run two races in
the Busch Series. They found no success
there, with two engine failures. But
then on September 13, 1987, Irvan ran a No. 56 Chevrolet 35 laps at Richmond
before the car overheated. The sponsor
on the car that day was none other than Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet. Irvan was then picked up for three races by
car owner D. K. Ulrich, and Reno became the crew chief for the No. 6 Chevrolet,
while Irvan ran one more race for Reno himself as well at Charlotte, where they
came home in eighth place and led a lap.
Irvan finished 50th in the Championship standings that year
while his sponsor for three of those five races won the title. Ulrich was
impressed enough with what he saw in Irvan that he put the Californian in his
car in a bid for the Rookie of the Year honors in 1988. Ulrich’s white No. 2 cars had Kroger on the
quarter panels and a bold driver behind the wheel. Irvan made 25 of the 29 races in 1988, and
the team struggled. Marc Reno was
replaced by Bob Johnson as the crew chief after the race at Watkins Glen. The best finish of the season was an 11th
at the second race at Martinsville, and the team finished 26th in
the final season points. Ken Bouchard would end up being crowned the Rookie of
the Year by a three point margin over Irvan, but Irvan was determined to come
out on top in the long run. That
determination would be visible again many times throughout his career. As 1989
approached, there would be no major changes for Irvan and the No. 2 Kroger
team. The results, however, were better,
and included four top-ten finishes at Richmond, Martinsville, and both races at
North Wilkesboro. The team ran as high
as 20th in the standings during the year, and ended up finishing in
22nd. In 1990,
Irvan drove three races for Junie Donlavey before the sponsor bailed on their
responsibilities and Irvan was told he was free to find another ride. The No. 4 Kodak Oldsmobile fielded by the
Morgan-McClure team had recently become available as Phil Parsons, the team’s
previous driver, was sidelined after a rocky start. Irvan promptly went out in his first race in
the No. 4 and finished in third place at Atlanta behind Dale Earnhardt and Morgan
Shepherd. Two weeks later at Bristol, he
scored his first pole position, and three weeks after that, at Talladega, Irvan
ripped off a string of five top-tens in six races,
culminating in a second place run at the first race at Michigan. The team had high hopes when they returned to
the two-mile oval in August, but an engine problem ended the day early. The high hopes would return a week later, and
this time, would be justified. At
Bristol, Irvan qualified in the sixth position, led 120 laps, and scored his
first career win. He followed that with
another pole two weeks later at Richmond.
As for 1990, the team finished with the one victory, 6 top-fives, 13 top-tens, and a ninth
place finish in the final standings. It
was beginning to look as though Irvan would be a short track specialist, based
on all the successes he was having on tracks less than one mile in length. However, it would be other styles of racing
where he would cement his name in the history books. Less than
one year after joining the Morgan-McClure team, Irvan found himself in the lead
at the 1991 Daytona 500 with only a few laps remaining. Irvan was at the head of the pack about five
car lengths in front of Dale Earnhardt and Davey Allison, who were battling
side by side and therefore unable to close on the leader. Joe Ruttman, Sterling Marlin, and Kyle Petty
were in the running as well. With three
laps to go, Earnhardt’s car got loose and began to spin, pushing Allison into
the outside wall. Kyle Petty could not
avoid Earnhardt and he was collected as well, while Allison’s car moved back
down the track and came to rest on the dirt embankment designed to keep race
cars out of Lake Lloyd. In those days
there were no “Green-White- Checkered” finishes, and they raced back to the
start/finish line as well, so the caution flag waved and Irvan had the lead
with two laps to go as he crossed under the flag stand. The remaining laps were run under the
caution, and Irvan won the Daytona 500, crossing the line at caution speed. Among the competitors, it was known that
Irvan had a strong desire to win, and that desire was often seen as aggression,
and many considered Irvan overly aggressive.
At Pocono, Irvan made contact with Hut Stricklin and a multi-car wreck
began. Irvan was under heavy scrutiny
from the media, the fans, and the drivers and teams. Having lost the respect of the NASCAR
competitors, he stood up in front of everyone in the pre-race drivers’ meeting
and apologized to everyone and asked for another chance to earn back their
respect. His apology was met with a lot
of applause, but there were a few who were skeptical. Irvan went on to win again in the 1991 season,
this time at the road course event at Watkins Glen. This was the race where long time independent
drivers J.D. McDuffie and Jimmy Means veered off course and crashed and
McDuffie was unfortunately killed. Irvan
finished out the year with two wins, eleven top-fives,
nineteen top-tens and a fifth place finish in the
final standings. The 1992
season looked promising when February came around, and the early parts of the
Daytona 500 were looking just as good, as it was a strong showing from Irvan,
who was running along with Bill Elliott and Sterling Marlin at the front of the
pack. At just about the middle of the
race, however, the three got together and sent the race in a different
direction, with Davey Allison winning the race while Irvan finished 28th. In March at Atlanta, Irvan crashed in the
Busch Series race and earned a broken collarbone for his efforts. Irvan then went the next four races without a
top-ten finish. After leaving Talladega
in May with, finally, a top-five finish, Irvan’s season was going to take an
upward turn. Backing up that road course
win at The Glen in 1991, Irvan hit on the right combination again in 1992, but
this time it was at Sonoma. He also
backed up his 1991 Daytona 500 win with a victory in the 400 mile summer
classic at the same track, and then proved that neither of those plate track
wins were a fluke as he brought home the hardware from Talladega in July. The team also scored three poles and finished
eleventh in the final standings. During
the off-season, Irvan and fiancé Kim Baker were
married. 1993 would
end very differently than it would begin for Ernie Irvan. He began the year, still with Morgan McClure
in the No. 4 Kodak Chevrolet. He won yet
another race at Talladega in May, and scored poles at Dover and Daytona. At Loudon, Irvan would finish 15th,
but in the prerace ceremonies, shared a car in the parade laps with Davey
Allison, with whom he had become close friends.
The day after the race at Loudon, Allison would be critically injured
when his helicopter crashed while he was attempting to land at Talladega. Allison would unfortunately succumb to his
injuries the following day. After a few months
of negotiation, Irvan would be released from his ride in the Morgan-McClure car
in September, and would take the seat in Allison’s No. 28 Texaco-Havoline Ford, owned by Robert Yates. Irvan's first venture out in his new ride
resulted in a 5th place finish at Darlington. The following week at Richmond, the engine
expired and the team completed only 57 laps.
A week later at Dover, Irvan had led 18 laps, but was involved in an accident
which relegated him to a 26th place finish, 95 laps in arrears. In his fourth outing with Robert Yates
Racing, however, Irvan and the team brought home the win at Martinsville. In Victory Lane, as the team celebrated, Irvan
unzipped the top of his fire suit to reveal a Davey Allison T-shirt. Irvan dedicated the win to Allison and said
he had been wearing the T-shirt since the death of his friend. He followed that victory with another two
weeks later at Charlotte, and let the stock car racing world know that he would
definitely be a factor with his new team, which helped him finish in sixth
place in the Championship standings after leaving Morgan McClure in the ninth
position. On August 12th of
the 1993 season, Ernie and Kim welcomed their first child, a daughter they
named Jordan Leah. As 1994
began, the hype surrounding Irvan, the Robert Yates Racing Team, and the
Championship battle for the year was very high, and no one disappointed
anyone. Irvan ripped off four
consecutive top-five finishes to start the year, including a second place to
Sterling Marling (Irvan’s replacement in the No. 4 Kodak Chevy), as well as
wins at Richmond and Atlanta. An engine failure
at Bristol came next, but then Irvan went on another hot streak. Six consecutive top-five finishes were next,
including a 3rd at North Wilkesboro, second place finishes at
Martinsville and Talladega, a win at Sonoma, a 5th at Charlotte, and
a second at Dover. Pocono followed, and
resulted in a seventh place finish. All
of this added up to a 139-point lead in the standings over Dale Earnhardt. An 18th place at Michigan was
next, followed by another runner up run at Daytona in July. He also had a third at Talladega, but a crash
at Loudon and a broken timing chain at Pocono cost Irvan the point lead. Irvan led a good portion of the inaugural
race at Indianapolis and was a threat to win before a flat tire forced him to
make a late pit stop, and at Watkins Glen, Irvan would finish second to Mark
Martin. The
following week, the series headed to Michigan where the Yates team had previous
success. During the practice session on
Friday morning, a tire went down on Irvan’s Ford Thunderbird, sending the car
into the wall almost head-on at over 170 miles per hour. Irvan sustained multiple injuries, but the
worst were a fractured skull and collapsed lungs. An emergency tracheotomy was performed while
Irvan was still in the car, and that quick reaction by the track safety workers
probably saved his life. Once extracted
from the car and immobilized, Irvan was taken by helicopter to Ann Arbor
Michigan’s St. Joseph’s Hospital. He was
given a 10% chance to survive the night.
He did hang on, however, and continued to fight, though the first two
days were very rough. He began to
improve, slowly, and after a month was upgraded to fair condition. Difficult
and painful rehab would be next for the California native, but in October, two
months after his accident, Irvan was well enough to make a trip to Charlotte
for the Cup series race, and addressed the fans, and then did so again at the
season ending awards banquet in New York, to his fellow competitors whom he had
asked for forgiveness from just a few years prior. Through all of this, Irvan continued fighting
and continued his rehabilitation. He
wanted to return to his sport. More than
one year after his crash at Michigan, Irvan got his chance to race again after
being cleared by NASCAR. At Martinsville
in the fall, Irvan intended to run the Truck series race, but qualifying was
washed out, and Irvan did not qualify for the event. He did make his official
return to NASCAR racing on September 30th, 1995, when he ran at
North Wilkesboro in the Truck series.
Irvan led 24 laps, but retired early with a faulty suspension. The following day, Iran would make his return
to the Cup series. Dale Jarrett had
taken over the driving duties of the No. 28 while Irvan was recuperating from
his injuries, so at North Wilkesboro, Irvan ran a Robert Yates owned, Texaco-Havoline sponsored No. 88.
He was back racing, more than a year after a crash many thought he would
not survive. Irvan not only completed
the race, but finished 6th and also led 31 laps. He would make additional starts at Phoenix,
finishing 40th with a soured engine, and the final race of the year
at Atlanta where he would finish in the 7th position. When 1996
began, Irvan was seated back in the No. 28 while team mate Dale Jarrett was
awarded the No. 88. Irvan struggled
through the first three races of the season but did win a 125-mile qualifying
race at Daytona and score a top-five at Atlanta. It was a very up and down season, performance
wise, however, as top-fives and top-tens were intertwined with finishes in the 20’s and
30’s. Irvan scored a mini-victory when
he returned to Michigan and finished fifth.
He followed that up with another 5th at Daytona, and then one
week later, at Loudon, Ernie Irvan’s comeback story would be complete. He qualified sixth and led 38 laps en route
to his first win since his accident almost two years prior. He would win again later that season at Richmond,
and would finish the season tenth in points. The 1997
season was another difficult one for Irvan.
Larry McReynolds, the longtime crew chief for the No. 28, left the team
to go work for Richard Childress and Dale Earnhardt. Irvan’s old car owner and crew chief, Marc
Reno was hired as his replacement. There
were only four top-ten finishes in the first thirteen races of the season, and
Irvan was 18th in the standings, more than 600 points behind. What happened next, however, was a fairy tale
that could never be written, only lived.
The following race was very much like any other. There were lead changes, cautions and an
eventual winner. Ernie Irvan lead thirty-three laps during the race, including the last
one. For Irvan, this was no ordinary
race, though. This race had been run at
Michigan, the track that nearly claimed his life 1029 days before. The rest of
the 1997 season went much like it started, a few bright spots mired in mediocre
finishes. At the end of the year, Ernie
Irvan would part company with Robert Yates Racing and join MB2 Motorsports and
the No. 36 Skittles Pontiac. Just before
the Daytona 500 in 1998, Irvan would become a father for the second time. This time it was a son to bless the family,
and they named him Jared. When he
stepped into the car, Irvan started off the 1998 season with a sixth place
finish in the Daytona 500. Dale
Earnhardt won with Larry McReynolds as his crew chief. The team had high and low points throughout
the season, and a victory eluded them. They
did have eleven top-ten finishes, however, and scored three poles as well, but
finished 19th in the final Championship standings. This was largely due to Irvan missing three
races after an injury sustained in a wreck at Talladega. In 1999, Skittles was gone as a sponsor but
the parent company, M&M/Mars stuck around, this time using their big brand
candy which would become and remain a sponsor in the series to this day. M&M’s was now on the car, but the results
were mostly the same, and when the series headed to Michigan in August, it
would look alarmingly similar to five years prior. Again, on August 20th, Irvan was
practicing his Busch Series car and crashed hard into the wall again. He was once again extracted and airlifted to
the hospital. Irvan would
make a complete recovery by the end of the 1999, but at Darlington, South
Carolina just two weeks after the latest crash at Michigan, Irvan’s wife Kim
and two children, Jordan and Jared, joined him at a press conference. It was an extremely tearful event, and when
it was finished, Ernie Irvan had announced his immediate retirement from active
competition to avoid any further accidents and possible injuries. Not ready to
leave the sport completely, Irvan announced that he was starting his own Cup series
team in a partnership with Mark Simo, a fellow racer
and now CEO and co-founder (with his twin brother, Brian, and Marty Moates) of the No Fear company, which offers clothing as
well as an energy drink. The duo of
Irvan and Simo was reported to have sponsorship from
Federated Auto Parts, but it never came to fruition. Irvan dropped out of the picture, and Simo later started No Fear Racing with long time crew chief
Frank Stoddard. The team had very
limited success with Boris Said as a driver and is no longer in operation. Irvan was,
for the most part, out of the sport, but wasn’t invisible. He would visit the tracks frequently, usually
in the capacity of helping an up and coming driver in the ARCA or Busch
Series. Behind the scene, Irvan dealt
with yet another type of racing tragedy.
In March of 2000, a fire at his residence resulted in the destruction of
all of the trophies and memorabilia Irvan had acquired throughout his years in
NASCAR. Luckily, unlike his in-sport
injuries, this could be fixed rather easily, and was, when NASCAR created and
provided Irvan with replicas of all of those lost trophies. In 2005,
Irvan was deep into his Race2Safety Foundation program, which focused on the
awareness and prevention of head injuries.
As a method of awareness, Irvan returned to Michigan once again, and
took one more lap, but this time it was on foot in a track walk. Irvan was joined by several other drivers and
many fans for the two-mile trip around the speedway. In 2011, Irvan joined Kenny Schrader and “Mr.
Excitement” Jimmy Spencer in Canada for the Race of Champions at Flamboro Speedway in Milgrove,
Ontario, Canada. Irvan was in the
feature race but unfortunately finished last.
These days
you can find Irvan as the car owner, car chief and the biggest fan of his son,
Jared, who is turning out to be quite a fine driver himself. Irvan the Younger has run everything from
Karts to Quarter Midgets to Legend Cars, and even some Super Late Models. In 2014 he will compete in the PASS (pro
All-Star Series South) series and the CMS Summer Shootout Series. He is focused on his current level of racing
now, but does cast an eye toward the Sprint Cup Series, the ultimate goal. In his
Winston Cup career, Ernie Irvan scored a respectable 22 pole positions and
fifteen victories. He also had 68
top-five and 124 top-ten finishes. He
continues to live with his family in Cabarrus County in North Carolina. For his injury and recovery in 1994-1995, Irvan was given the
Maxwell House Spirit Award as well as the 1995 Arete
Award for Courage. In 2002, he was
selected as a torch bearer for the 2002 Olympic Games, and in 2002 was inducted
into the Stock Car Hall of Fame and as one of the top ten greatest sports
comebacks of all time by MSNBC. Throughout
his career, Ernie Irvan was given a few nicknames such as “Swervin’
Irvan,” “Dirty Ernie,” and to a very select few, just paying homage to his
hometown, “Ernesto From Modesto.” The ones which should stick out the most and
be used to best describe Irvan, however, are “Survivor,” “Inspirer,” and
“Champion,” all of which he earned without question. |
Irvan apologizes to his fellow competitors...
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