In the Trivia section for this movie it says..."The scene where Cole Trickle leaves the pits after a race to hit Russ Wheeler is also based on an actual event during the 1987 all-star race at Charlotte, NC between Driver Bill Elliot and Dale Earnhardt."
Could anybody share the story of the real incident? Who hit who and why? What was the result?
Bill Elliot hit Dale Earnhardt because Elliot is a dick. Earnhardt hit the wall and died. true story.
shareWith regard to your comments, godlovesugly... I'm afraid you have all of your facts wrong.
First, Earnhardt hit the wall and was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500, not the 1987 running of The Winston. Second, that crash was not a result of Dale being "hit" by Elliott, but rather from a series of events that may or may not have included the air being taken off Dale's spoiler, as well as very slight contact with Sterling Marlin. But the bottom line is that no one knows exactly what caused the crash, because of all of the variables that were involved.
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freakin retard tryin to say that awesome bill from dawsonville would wreck and possibly kill another driver intentionally. hella dum.
shareThe 1987 all-star race (called The Winston) will forever be remembered for the Pass in the Grass. In that race, Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott were racing for the lead, when the two made contact. Dale's car was turned sideways, and went into the grass. Dale was able to keep control of the car, drive it back onto the track, all while maintaining his lead over Bill. The post-race activities only consisted of some harsh words from both drivers.
I'm afraid that, much like the majority of Days of Thuder, the film's intential crash scene is not based on any actual events from any NASCAR Cup series race. While angry drivers have spun other drivers out after the race, or will give the winner a congratulatory 'donut' on the cool down lap, but following the 1987 all-star race, or any other event, one used his racecar to 'take another driver out' as seein in the film.
Actually, most of this movie is true. It didn't all happen to one drive as it did to Cole. I can see a lot of similarities between Cole and other NWC drivers. If I were to sit here and watch the movie, I could tell you who each real-life driver each scene happened to. I have been following NWC since the late 70's (back then it was NASCAR Grand National, now NASCAR Nextel Cup).
shareBy the way nobody killed Dale Earnhart, he was drafting to hard, lost control, and was killed on impact when he slammed into the wall, i should know, i was there when it happend
shareJust because you were there when it happened doesn't mean that you know what happened.
"he was drafting to hard" , he was too far behind Jr to get a tow off the 8 car so how could he be drafting too hard ?
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Earnhardt was definetly not "drafting"....if anything he was blocking so that Mike Waltrip and Dale Jr (both cars being owned by dale earnhardt enterprises) would have a clear path to battle it out between the two of them
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Dale Earnhart killed Dale Earnhart, simple as that, he was blocking for his two cars and got bad air and hit the wall. Blocking for family members is a racing thing that is done from Nascar all the way to local dirttract.
shareYeah, it was Dale Earnhardt's own fault. He was thinking about the sponsership money more then winning so he was block those last few laps.
Earnhardt's last words on the radio were, "They aint getting by."
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Dale Earnhart died of a base of the skull fracture upon impact. This is the same thing that kills a person when they are dropped while being hung. He wasn't the first, though he wasn't a strong beliver in the theory. After the crash, a new regulation was introduced requiring a strap on the back of the helmet, attatched to the seat restraining the head .
K-B-I-L-L-Y, Where the 70's survive.
I think Russ Wheeler is loosely based of Ken Schrader as well. Cole Trickle (aka Tim Richmond) gets hurt and in comes the new guy to replace him. Just as in real life when Schrader took over the #25 Folgers car.
shareIronicly Dale Earnhart was one of the most outspoken resisters of the HANS device...the device designed to prevent the base of skull fractures. I have seen an interview with one of the track doctors, who says that on the day before his fatal crash Earnhart commented that he had never had an injury like that in all his years of racing, and that he would never wear the HANS device because he believed it to be dangerous.
shareDale Earnhardt died because he was blocking everyone from winning the Daytona 500. Jr was also doing the same thing, only he was much closer to Michael Waltrip, who had never won a race. Dale blocked them so Michael would finally get a Cup win.
shareAll of the people saying Earnhardt killed himself are very ignorant and haven't been paying attention to racing. Blocking at restricter plate races is what drivers have to do to protect their position. Dale did what all the other drivers have done themselves at Daytona or Talladega. It was coming down to the very end of the race. Contact happens all the time when people are racing that hard and that close. I never bought the theory a commentator made about him blocking to help his buddies because he had enough reason to block for his own finish. The leaders were too far ahead for his blocking to benifit them anyway. Dale was a stubborn guy and never wanted to wear the full faced helmet let alone a HANS. Almost all the drivers were skeptical of the effictiveness of a HANS device in cup/busch (obviously all were wrong). It really sounded like you guys really wanted to blame somebody for an obvious racing incident (an accident with NO BLAME). It could have been any of the top drivers in NASCAR, but it happened to be him.
Intentional contact has always been common after NASCAR races. It happens during the race too. A big majority of the intentional wrecks have been at slow speed race tracks or while under caution at the big ones so the risk of injury from driver retalliation is pretty low unless a driver does something incredibly dumb at a high speed track. There's been some really dumb risky paybacks before though.
You can watch any tape of the accident and you will see that Earnhardt was blocking a pack of three wide cars, lost the air on his spolier, came down in front of Sterling Marlin and Elliott Sadler and his car turned up into the wall. The whole thing was absolutely no one's fault and no one could have done anything about it. Things like that happen all the time, just that particular day, something terrible happened.
shareTrickle's #46 Superflo car, the pink and white one, also bears quite a similarity to Derrick Cope's Purolater car of the same time period. Not only in paint scheme, but also both motor-part related sponsors.
Dale Earnhardt's accident was just that, an accident. Part of the risks of racing. It was tragic, like any death.
The correct term for Dale Sr's injury is basil skull fracture, not "base of the skull fracture." It's a closed head injury casued by a violent jerking of the head that destroys blood vessels going to the brain, causing either instant death or a wide variety of debilatating injuries.
share"The correct term for Dale Sr's injury is basil skull fracture"
Hmmm. Presumably, there were no herbs involved in his death ...
ITYM "basAl", the adjective derived from the noun "base".
I understand you're trying to be clever....too bad there is such as thing as a BASIL skull fracture.
shareGo to www.findadeath.com in the directory, to find infos and pictures about #3's death. You'll find some bloody stuff.
share> I understand you're trying to be clever....too bad there is such as thing as a BASIL skull fracture.
Only in language hell, baby.
There is also something called BASAL skull fracture [1]. I'm wondering if they are the same thing. And where the herbal version comes from. Is this possibly similar to the reason there is an HTTP header called "Referer" ...
There is also a term used on the internet: "Basilar skull fracture". Maybe this leads to confusion. Perhaps confusion also arises from the fact that "basal" and "basil" are pronounced the same by Americans, whereas "basil" has a short "a" when spoken by Brits.
I'm not a doctor, but I am good at English. If you look at the definitions of the words "basil" and "basal" in a dictionary it's immediately obvious that the term is "Basal skull fracture". That people misspell it as "Basil skull fracture" is neither here nor there.
As a final note, google fetches up 209 results for "basil skull fracture", whereas it finds over 12,000 for "basal skull fracture".
[1] http://meme.essortment.com/skullfractureb_rsyl.htm
ok bill elliot rammed earnhardt after the 1987 winston....earnhardt died in the 2001 daytona 500...the pass in the grass was before both of those...so get your facts straigt...so you people really shouldnt talk about NASCAR unless you are a die hard fan....if you are a die hard fan you kno how i feel....i didnt read all the replies so if sombody already said this...i apologize for repeteing it....
ps..it was a basal skull fracture
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And yet of course we need only look to F1 for multiple cases of drivers deliberatly crashing into others
In 1989, Prost needed only for Senna not to win in Japan
Therefore he crashed ( at low speed) as Senna attempted to pass into the chicane
Result: Prost out. Senna Disqualified for push start (or missing a chicane, there was some confusion about this). Prost World Champion
1990 in revenge (and in similar world championship position at MUCH higher speed Senna rams Prost off the track from behind.
Result: Prost and Senna Both out. Senna World Champion.
Senna even admitted to this later, but got away with it.
1994 Michael Schumacher needs to make sure Hill doesn't beat him.
Schumacher makes a rudimentary error damaging his own car. Then as Hill passes, Schumacher deliberately crashes. Damagng Hills car.
Result: Schumacher and Hill both out. Schumacher World Champion
1997 Micahel Schumacher needs to make sure Villeneuve doesn't beat him.
Schumacher deliberately turns in on Villeneuve to attempt to put him out of the race. (This time it is caught on onboard camera and no amount of equivocation by the authorities can pretend it wasn't deliberate).
Result: Schumacher into gravel trap, VIlleneuve continues with slightly damaged suspension.
Villeneuve World CHampion
Schumacher disqualified from 2nd place in world championship for '97. No further action taken
Finally a LITTLE justice.
Thus, FISA have shown quite clearly that its pretty much ok to deliberately crash into whoever you like in F1 so long as you finish highest in the points at the end of the season.
Pitiful :(
Just to prove that this sort of thing does happen, Carl Edwards drove out on the track and rammed Dale Earnhardt Jr. during the Busch Series race two weeks ago.
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