Sunday, February 25, 2001
Earnhardt crash close to home
Blue Ash native worked pits at Daytona
By Tom Groeschen
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Blue Ash native Jeff Fultz was working in the Daytona 500 pits when Dale Earnhardt was killed last Sunday. The NASCAR crews, unlike the fans in the stands, almost immediately knew something was seriously wrong.
Fultz works for Winston Cup driver Robert Pressley, who finished 14th in the race. The Pressley crew was three stalls down from Earnhardt's on pit row.
“The Earnhardt guys were pretty upset right after the race, so we knew it was bad,” Fultz said. “Then I overheard some NASCAR official on his radio, and he was in contact with the ambulance. They were saying it didn't look real good.”
In the stands, hardly anyone was concerned.
“The wreck didn't look that bad,” said Rick Eveland, a 38-year-old West Chester man who attended the race. “We thought Earnhardt had just bumped the wall.”
Eveland's seats were in Turn 4, not far from where the crash occurred.
“That wreck earlier, the one with 20 cars, looked a lot worse,” he said.
Eveland and his parents, who live near Daytona Beach, sat in the stands for several minutes afterward. Daytona traffic is always a nightmare, and the Evelands were waiting it out. As some fans departed and some sat, safety crews worked to free Earn hardt from his car.
“We were just hanging around, and then we saw them start cutting him out of the car,” Eveland said. “When we saw that, everybody just kind of froze.”
Still, fans kept filing toward the parking lots. It was expected that Earnhardt would be fine, the usual “treated and released” routine. A couple of hours later, the bad news came.
“We were at my parents' house by then,” Eveland said. “When they said he was dead, we all just kind of looked at each other. Nobody said anything.
“It was just so hard to believe somebody had died in that wreck. Especially him.”
Fultz, 30, felt the same, albeit from a different perspective. He is a driver of some renown, having raced several years on the NASCAR regional All-Pro stock circuit. Fultz finished second in the All-Pro season standings in 2000, and his full-time job is as a fabricator in Pressley's Winston Cup shop.
“As a driver, you hurt inside,” Fultz said. “But you never think this could happen to you. If you did, you'd never get into a race car.”
About five years ago, Earnhardt visited Cincinnati's annual Cavalcade of Customs at the Albert B. Sabin Cincin nati Convention Center. He signed autographs for fans and visited Fultz's show car.
“I'm not acting like I was his good friend, but he did come over and talk to me,” Fultz said.
Fultz later became a virtual neighbor of Earnhardt's in Mooresville, N.C., site of many NASCAR race shops. Fultz's home is about a mile from Earnhardt's sprawling DEI complex.
Fultz now knows what it was like at Graceland when Elvis Presley died in 1977.
“I could barely get home this week, with all the people and the traffic down here,” Fultz said. “I've never seen anything like it. All the race teams are taking it pretty hard, too. It'll take a while to get over this.”
LOCAL SCENE: Fultz said he will continue to drive the NASCAR All-Pro series this year. He also is negotiating to run in the NASCAR Busch and Craftsman Truck races at Kentucky Speedway.
• Darrell Lanigan (Union, Ky.) could be driving in two ARCA races at Kentucky Speedway this year.
• Dave Renner reports that his Pit Talk racing show is back for its eighth season on WMOH-AM (1450), on Thursday nights.
E-mail: tgroeschen@enquirer.com.
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Earnhardt crash close to home
