Intimidation factor, Dale Earnhardt

[The General]

Robbie Loomis was the crew chief when Jeff Gordon won his fourth and most recent NASCAR championship in 2001.

Now the vice president of racing operations for Petty Enterprises, Loomis has watched the incredible year his former driver has had this season.

Yet, it likely will go for naught, unless Gordon can overcome Jimmie Johnson's seemingly insurmountable 86-point lead heading into Sunday's season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

When I asked Loomis on Friday how, if he still were Gordon's crew chief, he would instruct his driver to run Sunday's race, Loomis didn't mince words.

"Wreck Jimmie," Loomis said.

Surely, he was kidding, right?

Nope. Loomis was serious as a heart attack.

"It's the championship," Loomis said. "You only get a couple shots at the championship."

Whether Gordon would follow his former crew chief's instructions is a whole other thing. But as long as Loomis felt that he had planted a seed in Gordon's mind, he had achieved his goal.

"I would tell Jeff (to wreck Johnson)," Loomis said. "He'd laugh and tell me I'm crazy, but at least I'd have it in his head, thinking about it."

Listening to Loomis got me thinking, would anyone actually do that – wreck the person standing between himself and the championship?

Hmmm, I could only think of one driver who might, the late Dale Earnhardt. The Intimidator himself.

And so with that in mind, I set out to find those who knew Earnhardt well, to ask the question: What would Dale do?

"He'd race just the same way that got you to where you're at," said Richard Childress, Earnhardt's boss for six of his seven Cup championships. "That was always our theory."

But would Earnhardt put a fender into Johnson if he was in Gordon's spot?

"I wouldn't say he wouldn't," Childress said with a big smile before walking away, chuckling to himself.

Richard Petty then came into view. Although Petty's last Cup race also was Gordon's first (Atlanta, fall 1992), he battled Earnhardt head-to-head for 15 years. As Petty's career wound down, he watched Earnhardt's take off, eventually tying him for most career championships with seven apiece.

"There's nothing Jeff can do," Petty said. "It's not in Jeff's hands. It's in Jimmie's hands. All Jeff can do is go out and do the very best he can and hope that Jimmie has worse luck than he has. That's the only way he's going to win it."

Although they banged a few fenders over the years, Petty said Earnhardt was not the dirty racer so many made him out to be, but with a caveat.

"If you got in his way, that's when he put a fender into you," Petty said. "He never knocked people out of the way just for the sake of doing it. It was always advantageous for him to do it, or he didn't do it."

But wouldn't the possibility of winning a championship be considered an advantageous time for Earnhardt to do it – and for Gordon also to do on Sunday?

"He'd try to win the race," Petty said of Earnhardt. "That's all he could do, that's all Jeff can do, all that anybody can do in this deal. You don't worry about what the other guy's doing. You've got to worry about what you're doing."

Then I asked Gordon what Earnhardt would do if he were in Gordon's shoes.

"I think about that every once in a while, how would Dale be influencing things happening in the sport today; how would he run on the track; how would he compete against some of the drivers that are out there today," Gordon said.

Earnhardt all but adopted Gordon early in his career, mentoring and teaching him not only how to be a good race car driver but also how to become a champion.

"While he taught me some lessons in '93 and '94 by putting the bumper to me several times, in '95 that rarely ever happened in competition," Gordon said of his first championship-winning season. "You knew when to stay away from him, and you knew when you had to race him hard. You knew he was going to lean on you, and you had to be ready for that."

But being like Earnhardt is not in his makeup, Gordon said. He would rather race Johnson cleanly and let him win fair and square than to push him out of the way or intentionally wreck him.

"You just can't do some of the things that you used to be able to do," Gordon said. "I don't even know if Dale would have been able to get away with some of those things today."

Surprisingly, Gordon thinks the Intimidator would support him if he races Johnson cleanly on Sunday.

"I've always said the most intimidating thing is the guy in your mirror that's running you down," Gordon said. "You don't have to drive a black car and rough guys up to do that. I think the style and competitiveness, with the microscope we're under, has changed that quite a bit over the years."

While Dale Sr. might not have been able to get away with that much today, he still might have tried, maybe putting a fender or two to Johnson.

"Sure, why not?" Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. "He was the best at doing that."

Finally I asked Johnson, what he would do if it were Earnhardt rather than Gordon chasing him Sunday.

"I know I'd be shaking in my driving shoes right now," Johnson said.

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