THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060616
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Forty-six days after nearly losing his life in a skull-shattering crash in Michigan, Ernie Irvan came to Charlotte Motor Speedway, visiting a NASCAR Winston Cup garage for the first time since his accident.
And he had a forceful message, which he repeated several times: Slow the speeds in NASCAR racing.
``I would probably be sitting here at Charlotte Motor Speedway getting ready to qualify if we were going 20 miles an hour slower,'' Irvan said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
``Obviously, I think the speeds are too fast.''
Noticeably thinner, and wearing an eye patch to protect his injured left eye, the 35-year-old Winston Cup star visited the 1.5-mile speedway on a perfect autumn afternoon.
Drivers, mechanics and car owners came in a steady stream to say hello and shake Irvan's hand as he stood next to his No. 28 Ford Thunderbird and chatted with crew members.
Leonard Wood stopped by, as did Barry Dodson and Jack Roush and Richard Childress and Tony Glover, Irvan's old crew chief, and dozens of others, obviously delighted to speak to a man who came so close to paying the ultimate price for the sport he loves.
Later he met with the press for only the second time since his devastating accident during practice on the morning of Aug. 20 at Michigan International Speedway, which left him with critical head and lung injuries.
``We don't need to go that fast to put a good show on, and we don't need anybody else injured,'' he said. ``What's going to happen if somebody else gets injured, say Dale (Earnhardt) or Rusty (Wallace) or somebody else like that? How are we going to sell tickets? I don't think we can afford to lose any more drivers, or emotionally, I don't think a lot of people can take anybody else getting injured.
``I want everybody to learn from what's happened to me. NASCAR's doing that. I really want the speeds to slow down.''
Irvan said the injury to his left eye is one of his biggest recovery challenges.
``My left eye is just going to take some time for healing,'' he said. ``We don't know. Evidently my eye was injured all the way to the back of my skull. You get with one doctor and he thinks it might be three months. You get with another doctor and they tell of times it's taken two years. We don't know.''
Irvan says he and his wife, Kim, pray every night that his recovery will be complete enough so he can return to racing. But he seems to accept the possibility that it may not happen.
``I've raced all my life,'' he said. ``I was racing when Kim met me, and I probably never would be happy unless I'm racing. But I think I'm going to race again, for sure.
``I feel real fortunate to be alive and do the things that I can do and the biggest thing I've got to realize is that if God never wanted me to race again, there's something else he wants me to do. So I'm going to have to do that, and that's going to be something I have to live with.''
Irvan said he feels ``pretty good,'' but has to rest every couple of hours. He was released from the Charlotte Institute of Rehabilitation Friday, but continues outpatient rehab three times a week and works out five days a week. He cannot yet drive a car, but said he has driven his tractor and taken his daughter, Jordan, for rides.
He said he gets ``tremendous headaches,'' especially at night. ``I had a lot of skull fractures and they're still healing,'' he noted.
And he has a broken eardrum which he said will be repaired in a few weeks by outpatient surgery .
``I sure would like to be feeling a lot better,'' he said.
``But I guess that some of the things I've got to think about is that it's 40-something days from the accident and knowing that Kim had to put up with the doctors walking in and giving me a 10 percent chance of living.
I feel like we've made leaps and bounds in the last 40 days and I sure hope in the next 40 days I can do the same.''
SPENCER TO DRIVE FOR CARTER: Travis Carter, owner of the No. 23 Smokin' Joes Ford Thunderbird, announced Wednesday that Jimmy Spencer will be his driver in 1995, replacing Hut Stricklin.
Spencer will be leaving Junior Johnson and the No. 27 Ford. That apparently doesn't thrill him; even the press release announcing the switch seemed to acknowledge that.
``Right now, I still have mixed feelings,'' Spencer said in the release. ``I really appreciate everything Junior has done for me, but sometimes you just have to move on.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ernie Irvan talks with Ken Schrader on Wednesday, Irvan's first day
back at a race track since he was critically injured Aug. 20.
by CNB