Free In the Blink of an Eye by Michael Waltrip Page A

hear.
    The crazy thing was, I couldn’t tell anybody. It wasn’t like I could push the radio button and tell my current team that Dale Earnhardt and NAPA had just hired me. After all, I was in Richmond to race for their team.
    So when Dale walked off, I just had to sit there. All by myself. On Fantasy Island.
    But I wanted to tell somebody. I couldn’t wait for practice to be over. In fact, I couldn’t wait for the weekend to be over, for the season to be over. I didn’t give up on the rest of the 2000 season. But the races I most looked forward to were the ones coming up in 2001, the ones I’d be racing in for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.
    The person I wanted to tell first was Buffy. She was waiting in the bus. She was as nervous as I was to learn the answer from NAPA. So when I got out of the car, I went straight to the bus. We high-fived like you see on TV. Then I told her, “We gotta call Momma.” We did, and Mom couldn’t believe it. After sharing the news with my family, it was time to share it with the NAPA family.
    To do that, Dale and I headed west aboard N1DE, his Learjet, to attend a big NAPA convention in Las Vegas. It was going to be a quick trip: We left Statesville Wednesday around noon and would return there twelve hours later, after spending six or seven hours in the air and a few more with the NAPA folks in Vegas.
    When we got to Vegas, Dale introduced me to the NAPA family as his “next winning driver.” Me, the driver of the new NAPA #15 car.
    Back on the jet heading east, you probably would have thought we’d sleep or just relax. But that wasn’t how Dale rolled. He liked to play gin rummy. The game was Rummy 500; the first to get to five hundred points won. That could take a while.
    Three hours and twenty minutes later when we landed in Statesville, the score was 640 to 620. The game went into overtime. You see, I was leading when we got to five hundred, but not by much, and Dale said I had to win by twenty points. And by the time we got off the plane he had beaten me.
    I’d told Buffy. Buffy and I told Momma. Dale and I told NAPA. Now it was time to tell the world. We needed to hurry up and do the telling.
    We wanted the announcement to have a little drama. But keeping secrets in the NASCAR world is never easy. There’s people you have to tell. If you’re starting a team, you have to let your team know. You’ll need a sponsor. You have to tell your sponsor your plan. You have to hire people. They’ll want to know what they’ll be working on. Sometimes, by the time you get around to the formal announcement, everybody already knows.
    Whether everybody knew what Dale was going to announce or not, they wanted to hear him explain—not what he was doing but why he was doing it. So when Dale and Teresa announced a press conference at DEI headquarters, there was a huge turnout.
    I drove up in a NAPA delivery truck with a giant blue-and-yellow hat on top of it.
    I didn’t so much mind the first question that was asked. I just didn’t like how it was asked.
    “Why Michael?” one of the reporters asked in a tone that was nowhere close to flattering.
    Dale’s answer sounded familiar to me. I’d heard it before, and it sounded just as great as ever.
    “Because Michael will win in my car.”

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CHAPTER 18
DAYTONA BOUND
    I ’d done my share of losing over the past fifteen years—and maybe a couple of other people’s share too. But I didn’t feel like a loser anymore.
    I didn’t care what the record book said. I didn’t care what condescending questions the reporters might ask. The Michael Waltrip who was on his way to Daytona in 2001 under Dale Earnhardt’s wing? This Michael was undefeated, and he was walking around acting like it. This Michael knew he could win. And back at the factory in Mooresville, the team knew it too.
    During the winter, I had done my job. I had won my team over. They believed in me now. None of them seemed the least bit concerned about my stupid