The Daytona 500 was always Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s favorite race of the year. It was and still is NASCAR's Super Bowl, but with a twist: The NFL's biggest game of the year ends the season, NASCAR's biggest race starts it (this year, it's on Sunday, February 16).The race at Daytona International Speedway on February 18, 2001, wasn't just any new season for NASCAR: It was the first Daytona 500 of the new century. And the beginning of NASCAR's ascension into primetime, thanks to a groundbreaking $2.4 billion deal with Fox Sports. Before that, finding a NASCAR race was an adventure for fans, as broadcast rights for the sport were spread across seven networks."Fox Sports had one goal: make NASCAR the next big American sport," Jay Busbee, senior sportswriter for Yahoo Sports and author of Earnhardt Nation, told Our American Stories. "And Fox was about to do what Fox Sports did best: make the event a spectacle. The center of the spectacle—the personality in the middle of everything—was Dale Earnhardt."The racing legend was 49 years old on the day of NASCAR's biggest race in the sport's 50-plus-year history—the sport's very first race took place on Orlando's sandy beach back in 1948. "It was a beautiful day, blue skies, warm weather, the kind that everybody else in the country is looking at and saying, 'Man, I wish I was there,'" Busbee recalled.Busbee described the action in the pits that day. "There were drivers, crew chiefs, family members, and media there, and right by Earnhardt's black Goodrich #3 was Teresa Earnhardt. Sharp and business-like in a deep purple blazer, black slacks and sunglasses, she kissed him once, and then kissed him again. They weren't long kisses. They were the loving, routine kisses a wife gives her husband as he heads off to his job."It would be the last time husband and wife would go through that pre-race ritual. On the final lap of the race, heading into turn 4, Earnhardt's car collided with Ken Schrader's car and hit the wall head-on.Schrader was the first person to get to the crash scene. In an interview 10 years later, he revealed what he'd seen that day: "I saw a friend in trouble. I didn't know for certain that he was dead, but I would have bet. That sticks with you."Earnhardt's son, Dale Jr., who finished second in the race, shared the memory of his final moment with his dad in the hospital. "I walked into dad's room, and knew right away it was as bad as it could be," he recalled. "I turned around and walked back out of there and sat for 30 minutes in that hospital before they told us he was gone."His father was pronounced dead at 5:16 p.m. ET. The cause of death was a basilar skull fracture.Ironically, the man known for his aggressive racing style died on the track playing a very different role. His team members—Michael Waltrip and son Dale—were at the front of the field on that fateful final lap. "He was, as the old saying goes, driving three wide all by himself—trying to hold off the entire field to give his drivers a chance to win," Busbee noted. Waltrip won the race. Earnhardt Jr. came in second. And Dale Earnhardt Sr., who'd proudly earned the nickname "The Intimidator," died playing the role of "The Protector."NASCAR's most iconic driver died racing. He was born into the sport, too. His life began in Kannapolis, North Carolina, just up the road from the long-defunct Metrolina Speedway, a place as legendary in North Carolina as old Ebbets Field is in Brooklyn, and just 30 miles from Charlotte.It was a small mill town and the people who lived there lived a regimented life. "Every day except Sunday, the mill would run, and every day except Sunday, the workers would leave their houses, work at the mill for their shift, and return home," Busbee said. "Dale's father Ralph, a sixth-grade dropout who worked in the mill, had other ideas: He had a need and desire to race cars."He also had a talent for racing and loved the freedom he felt doing it. In 1953, Earnhardt's father turned his part-time hobby into a full-time career, quitting the mill to give racing a try.His wife was horrified. They had five children, including young Dale, who was born in 1951. "But Ralph turned himself into a single-person enterprise responsible for every part of the racing machine from driving the car to repairing it, managing a racing operation and building himself into one of the most significant figures in early NASCAR history," Busbee added.Dale idolized his father. He spent endless hours in the garage trying to understand what his father did under the hoods of the cars he worked on. "In the end, young Dale decided to quit school and race for the same reason his father had: He was good at it and it kept him out of the mill," Busbee explained.His first car was an old, beat-up 1956 Ford Victoria and the color of the car was pink. "The big bad Intimidator with the black number three car drove a pink car, and did so largely because of a painting accident," Busbee laughed. "They thought they were painting it a sleek purple, but once the paint dried it turned into the pink of an uncooked steak." Earnhardt would drive the car well enough to get financial backing to continue in the sport.Earnhardt's father died at the kitchen table in 1973 at the age of 45. He'd lived a hard life as a smoker, inhaled a lot of exhaust, and lived with the stress of racing every weekend to provide for his family—and it all caught up to him," Busbee lamented. "It devastated Dale. He didn't know what to do. He locked up his father's garage. He didn't touch anything in it, all the cars and trophies. He sold his father's dogs. It was incredibly damaging to young Dale and took him many years to get over."Earnhardt would make some bad choices along the way. "He was a guy who had the hounds at his tail," Busbee explained. "Twice divorced, he had three kids, and no real options other than racing his way out of poverty, racing his way out of a 9-to-5 clock life."It was the 1979 Daytona 500 that would turn Dale's life around. "It was the first NASCAR race broadcast on TV from beginning to end," Busbee explained. "And a huge snowstorm blanketed the East Coast, leaving America with nothing much to do but sit inside and watch these hillbillies run around a track at high speeds down in Florida."What America got was a race for the ages. Richard Petty would win, but the most memorable part involved a wreck on the last lap of the race involving Bobby and Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough. "These legends collided and slid into the infield, and Yarborough comes over to Bobby's car, gets in his face, and starts punching him. Bobby gets out of his car, he starts swinging, Donnie pulls down, and gets involved in the mess, too. And America's watching these three lunatic race drivers beat on each other," Busbee exclaimed.What nobody noticed was a rookie named Dale Earnhardt, who made his way up to finish eighth, an extraordinary feat for a first-timer. Dale Earnhardt's career began, it turns out, in the very same place it would end.He would go on to win Rookie of the Year in 1979, and won his first of seven championships in 1980. Always that Earnhardt aggression was his trademark. "All his pent-up frustration, rage and desire to win," Busbee explained, "all of the trading paint with everybody on the track, not giving an inch, constantly knocking fenders, constantly ending up in walls" were what made Earnhardt a NASCAR legend. And fan favorite.NASCAR drivers weren't as thrilled. "Particularly once he switched over to his black car in the 1980s, the last thing a driver wanted to see was Earnhardt coming up in the rearview mirror. That was incredibly intimidating and it's why 'The Intimidator' was a perfect nickname," Busbee noted.What made him one of NASCAR's greatest? "He had a charisma and willpower most people don't," Busbee said. "And he was a kind of voice of people who wanted to be able to tell their boss to take this job and shove it. But maybe most significantly, he was the voice of drivers in the garage. He would stand up to sponsors, and to NASCAR and track officials whenever they needed it, because drivers historically had very little power and representation."Earnhardt was the last of the truly larger-than-life NASCAR drivers. Today's drivers may be more technically skilled and more media savvy, Busbee noted, but they lack the instinctive blend of talent, personality and attitude that Earnhardt embodied.Earnhardt's death led to major safety improvements in the sport. In fact, not a single driver has died in a NASCAR race since that tragic day in February of 2001, no doubt saying the lives of countless drivers."Earnhardt was a true American original," Busbee noted. "He embodied so many elements of who we like to believe we are as a nation, and who we want to believe we can be ourselves. He was a winner and a champion. He was a master of speed and a master of the automobile. These are two essential American obsessions. He created his entire world himself."