 RCRN: Do you have any funny stories about Richard?
RCRN: What are some of your best memories of Dale Earnhardt?
DM: "The fact that Dale was a regular guy stands out the most in my mind. He was a superhero to a lot of people, but to us he was just Dale and he stayed like that throughout his life. He never gave up, we never gave up and no one ever gave up.
We were racing in Richmond in the early days and we were running up front and then there was a big wreck. It had been raining for two days and Dale got off the track and into some mud near the start-finish line. The car was absolutely covered in mud. He couldn't see out the windshield and wanted to pit. Richard came over the radio and said that he didn't really want to lose all of the track position with Dale pitting. Dale came over the radio and said that he was going to be off the radio for a few minutes.
This is all under caution and we couldn't see what was going on where Dale was on the racetrack because this was back before we had televisions in the pits. We started to see the people in the grandstands standing up and pointing. The NASCAR officials were hollering at us, telling us to get Dale back in the car. He had undone his seatbelts and was sitting on the door of his car cleaning the windshield with his sleeve. We never did have to make a pit stop because he did that and we ended up finishing second or winning the race.
That is the kind of determination we had. We never left the building thinking that we couldn't win a race. We always knew that when we went to the track, we could win the race."
RCRN: How different was it being a pit crew member in the early 1980s than it is now?
DM: "I think what we are seeing now is pit crews are more important than they have ever been. Now, we have a lot more cars running a whole lot closer and we are seeing what happens on pit road means a whole lot more.
As far as a difference between then and now, it looks like a lot, but I don't think it is. Everyone still works hard on what they do. The thing about racing, over the last 20 years, is the exposure and the money. When I came to work here, there were probably a dozen of us. The guys who were on the pit crew also worked on the car until the time the car went on the line and then they pitted the car. You had your one core group of guys who did everything. Once racing got bigger, and the money got bigger, you were able to get more people and more specialized people.
I think with racing being as big as it is now and the crews on television every week instead of special events, these guys are starting to get a lot of credit that they really deserve. All of those guys who did it before them deserve credit as well."
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