That being said, the aftershock of the whole ordeal was on plain display throughout the rest of 2014. You, quite simply, looked like you were not having any fun in the Sprint Cup Series. At all.
I felt like I kind of knew the feeling too. Since the 2011 championship, I had become so out-of-touch with social life at Chapel Hill that I was miserably depressed. I pulled myself out of school and went to Community College for a year plus. I felt like I was idling then, in a lot of ways.
I had just found my new home at Belmont Abbey College, just to the west of Charlotte, when you came back to racing. I felt a bit sad that as my life was finally back on the upswing, yours was crashing down.
With the broken leg, and the crash, and the way things had changed in the sport since you entered, things just didn’t look the same. You weren’t competitive anymore.
Somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew the end was coming.
The actual day of the announcement couldn’t have been more beautiful. I remember leaning along a countertop in the campus coffee shop at the Abbey, looking out the window at a perfectly blue-skied September day.
I had pulled away from the hustle-and-bustle of school for just a bit, because I knew what this press conference was going to be about, and I wanted to be present in the moment for it.
So there I was, looking out into the sun, and then turning down to my phone as you announced that 2016 would be your last in the Sprint Cup Series as a driver.
In my head, it made sense. Perfect sense. But it didn’t mean that the shock wasn’t there.
Numbing is the best word I can use to describe what that feeling was like. Even with all of the information, and the wisdom, and the mental preparation I had tried to do beforehand, it was hard not to retrospect.
I thought about the past 16 years, and it how had been you that I had followed. I’ve always been a purist; I never entertained the thought of having multiple favorite drivers. Only you. It had been that way since Kindergarten.
That, at the end of the 2016 season, would change forever. Because I was going to be well on my way in the media world, and we can’t play favorites. Officially, at least.
And that would be that. I would never have another favorite driver. Never in the same sense that I had. That chapter of my life was quickly coming to an end, just as it would be for you.
How weird it would be come 2017 to see someone else in the No. 14. I suppose the “all good things” cliche is appropriate here.
That isn’t to say you didn’t have some tricks still up your sleeve tough.
The whole A.T.V. debacle wasn’t exactly a good trick, I don’t think. But it did cement in my mind that the 500 was never the prize for you that it was for me in my dreams, and that it would be best if I just accepted that and moved on.
The Stewart-Haas move to Ford was certainly an unexpected trick! But by this point, I knew the drill, and I could read between the lines pretty quickly. Hendrick had decided that the Stewart-Haas empire had come too close to approaching his own after Harvick won the title, so he shut the support pipeline down big-time.
Your explanation of why the team moved to Ford was eerily familiar: that you wanted the change, because it gave Stewart-Haas the best chance to be self-sufficient and compete at the very top level in the sport.
I immediately recognized that that was the same line of thinking that got you supporting Toyota and got you on the move to Stewart-Haas in the first place, nearly 10 years ago. A perfect example of “what’s old is new again.” Now that I’ve seen you pull it off enough times, I suspect that that will be a successful move. If anything, it gave my mom (who has driven Fords since I was born) another reason to cheer for you again (she liked the move to get Happy in the 4 car too!).
And Sonoma was just more proof that all that talent that you have held for so many years was still there. I’ll admit that I got nervous just like I had so many times before in the closing laps, because I knew Hamlin was coming. The wheelhops didn’t help either. And I could have sworn that it was over when Hamlin got you in Turn 7 on the last lap.
But you, as always, had other ideas. And somehow you got him to slip up, got underneath him, rammed him into the pit wall, and drove off with the left front tire smoking to the win (surely there’s a “Smoke” joke in there somewhere?).
My immediate reaction? “Oh, h*** s***!” Somewhere between disbelief and an almost comic appreciation for the whole thing, much like my reaction was to the ordeal with Kyle Busch was in the 2009 Daytona race.
What a vintage win, done your way, your style. It was just about the steering wheel and the trophy that you brought back, and nothing more! I’ll admit that I wasn’t quite sure it was still possible, which is why I kept saying “h*** ****!” in disbelief for the rest of that night afterwards. I loved it!
And I knew full well to take it in, because it might just be the last win of your career. I hope I’m wrong about that though!
Indy was special too, because it was my first time at the Brickyard 400 in person.
I get the sense that given the 1998 version of this race was the first NASCAR race I ever remember watching (on my great-grandmother’s black-and-white, UHF-knob T.V., no less!) means that there would already have been some poetic justice in there somewhere. But being there for your last Brickyard was when I finally figured out how much it meant to you. More than anything else, as a native Hoosier. Daytona was cool to win at, but it never really mattered. It isn’t special to you like Indy is.
That lap with Jeff at the end was epic, and quickly became one of my favorite moments in recent memory. I felt so silly – I heard you make the call to get the No. 88’s spotter on the scanner live, and I didn’t figure out what on earth you meant until I saw it right in front of me!
Oh, I might have also snuck down afterward to the actual Brickyard and kissed it too. Very cool moment for me, especially since it was the closest I had ever come to following in your footsteps!
But that was special. I appreciated the chance to be there and see it in person and salute you one last time at home. The same went for when I worked in the Media Centers at Charlotte and Martinsville a few weeks ago. Appreciation was the theme overriding it all.
