Driver: Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Car: No. 88 AMP/Get On the 88 Chevrolet
Track: Talladega Superspeedway (Nov. 1, 2009)
Bio: Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the acknowledged master of the modern-day Talladega Superspeedway, with six victories on the 2.66-mile speed plant. On Nov. 1, 2009, however, he had some help from the racing gods in one of the standard wild finishes there.
Driving the No. 88 AMP Energy/Get On the 88 Chevrolet, which featured 88,000 names of fans who took advantage of a promotion to have their names on the actual car during the race, Earnhardt Jr. was running 21st as the field came off Turn 4 to greet the waving white flag. Brad Keselowski, who won the spring race there by driving through a blocking Carl Edwards, tapped the back of Kurt Busch’s No. 2 car, which snap-hooked to the left and triggered a multi-car crash. In the melee, Mark Martin’s No. 5 Kellogg’s Chevrolet got speared from the side and induced into a snap-roll while airborne (he ended up back on all four wheels and tried driving it back around, but was unable to go very far).
With cars spinning and crashing all around him, Earnhardt Jr. stayed in the gas, made a small swerve to the left to avoid a spinning car and drove hey-diddle-diddle, straight through the middle to the finish line. That earned him an 11th-place finish in the crash-strewn race. Of note is the fact that cars still carried the wing in place of a rear spoiler, which made them jet-fighter-like in their ability to take off while running backwards at a high rate of speed.
This particular version of the COT (Car of Tomorrow) did not, Earnhardt Jr. said, perform up to expectations and was taken out of circulation.
“This car didn’t actually get torn up, didn’t wreck,” he said. “It just didn’t run that great. We ended up taking the car out of the rotation. It’s crazy. I think it’s the first car we ever stuck out here that came right off the race track without a dent on it.”
Because of the unique paint scheme, it wound up spending its final days as a lawn ornament in the Racecar Graveyard.