Ralph Earnhardt

Ralph Lee Earnhardt (February 23, 1928 – September 26, 1973) was an American stock car racer. He was the father of Dale Earnhardt, Sr.; the grandfather of Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Kelley Earnhardt Miller,Taylor Putnam, and Kerry Earnhardt, and great grandfather of Jeffrey Earnhardt and Bobby Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt helped get Bobby Isaac his start in racing.

Background

Earnhardt had German ancestry. He was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina as the son of Effie Mae Barber (August 30, 1895 - September 1979) and John Henderson Earnhardt (Mar 23, 1879 - Nov 5, 1953). John Henderson Earnhardt's first wife was Florence Phillips (Oct 7, 1877 – Nov 18, 1922). He and Florence had four daughters — Mary, Eula, Margie, and Octa Vayne.

He spent many years working in a cotton mill in North Carolina. One of the only ways out of this poor living was racing. Ralph started his racing career on dirt tracks where he was famous for keeping his car in top condition throughout each race.

Racing career

Dale Earnhardt

Ralph Dale Earnhardt /ˈɜːrnhɑːrt/ (April 29, 1951 – February 18, 2001), known professionally as Dale Earnhardt, was an American race car driver and team owner, best known for his involvement in stock car racing for NASCAR. He began his career in 1975 in the World 600 as part of the Winston Cup Series.

Regarded as one of the most significant NASCAR drivers, Earnhardt won a total of 76 Winston Cup races over the course of his career, including one Daytona 500 victory in 1998. He also earned seven NASCAR Winston Cup championships, tying for the most all-time with Richard Petty. His aggressive driving style earned him the nickname "The Intimidator".

On February 18, 2001, during the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, Earnhardt died at the age of 49 when he sustained a fatal basilar skull fracture after crashing in the race's final lap. He has been inducted into numerous halls of fame, including the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2010.

Biography

Early and personal life

NASCAR Racing

The NASCAR Racing series of video games, developed by Papyrus, started in 1994 and ended with the release of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season in 2003. Later NASCAR games were released by Electronic Arts who, through their EA Sports brand, took over the official NASCAR license. This article deals with the original series release, NASCAR Racing.

NASCAR Racing was released in the fall of 1994 for DOS personal computers. It featured more than 25 of the 40 regular drivers in the 1994 NASCAR Winston Cup season. Notable absences included Dale Earnhardt (who would go on to win the Winston Cup that year), Bill Elliott, Dale Jarrett, Kyle Petty and Darrell Waltrip, although the latter's brother, Michael, was included.

The game let the player race with up to 38 other cars (32 on shorter tracks like Bristol and Martinsville) and it also offered multiplayer action via direct links (one computer connected to another via a LAN) and also through an online system owned by Papyrus called Hawaii.

The CD-ROM version of the game also offered a SVGA graphics mode which was accessible through the command prompt (by entering "nascar -h"), but it was too demanding for many of the computers of its age, mostly 486 and early Pentium PCs. A hardware accelerated version was later created and bundled with the Matrox Millennium video card.

Dale

Dale or dales may refer to:

Locations

Geography

February 18

February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 316 days remaining until the end of the year (317 in leap years).

Events