On February 18, 2001, the NASCAR world lost Dale Earnhardt, putting the entire community in despair. Much like those fans and community, Sterling Marlin—one of the other two drivers involved in the accident—might be the one hit the hardest.
“He came to me that day at Rockingham a week after dad’s crash and said, ‘hey, man, would you mind doing me and assist here and telling people to get off my back there, literally giving me death threats.' And I thought, yeah, I can handle that and clean that up for you.”
“We never talked about it afterwards. So that stuck in my mind is like, you know what kind of. You know how if he didn’t have any guilt or […] concern or doubt about involvement in what happened that day that, you know, getting death threats about it certainly would have an impact on your psychological feelings about it.”
“He (Marlin) came to the studio with a group of people and some friends of his and so forth. They said, you know, about once a month, he watches the last ten laps of that race. And maybe looking at what might have could have been done or happened differently.”