Yahoo Autos Dale Earnhardt's 'Pass in the Grass' Is Greatest NASCAR Move that Never Happened
The "pass in the grass" at the 1987 Winston All-Star Race is one of the greatest passes (or legends) in NASCAR history.
Dale Earnhardt's at Charlotte Motor Speedway didn't actually happen—at least not as the the story goes.
Granted, it was a breath-taking moment—a spectacular save and recovery—but no pass.
Any talk of NASCAR’s most important moments must include the usual suspects: first Southern 500 in 1950; first Daytona 500 in 1959; the arrival in 1973 of R.J. Reynolds’ marketing money; the 1994 inaugural Brickyard 400; the legendary seven-Cup careers of Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, and Jimmie Johnson; the 2001 death of Dale Earnhardt; the first speedway night race in 1992; and the nationally televised 1979 Daytona 500.
And if you’re willing to accept an overhyped “greatest moment” that never happened, throw in the “pass in the grass” during the 1987 Winston All-Star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Regardless of popular lore that refuses to die, it didn’t actually happen.
There was no “pass” then, nor has there been one since. Rather, it should be awkwardly called “the maintain in the grass.” Granted, it was a breath-taking moment—a spectacular save and recovery—but no pass. Even so, you’ll find dozens of references to it wherever NASCAR history is told.
It happened—or didn’t—like this:
The ’87 all-star race was a three-segment, 135-lap, $200,000-to-win exhibition among NASCAR’s 20 most-recent winners. Bill Elliott won the pole and the first two segments, leading 121 of the first 125 laps. But Dale Earnhardt won the final 10-lap segment that determined the overall winner.
Early in that segment, as Elliott moved inside to pass Earnhardt exiting Turn 4, Earnhardt went left to block. (With a few laps remaining and $200,000 awaiting, was anyone surprised?) Contact between his left-rear and to Elliott’s right-front shoved Earnhardt fully into the trioval grass at the start-finish line. He stayed straight long enough – take a guess: 25 feet to 50 yards – to return to the asphalt still leading. With Elliott hobbled a few laps later by a cut left-rear tire, Earnhardt easily beat Terry Labonte and Tim Richmond.
Not surprising, neither Elliott nor Earnhardt had anything nice to say about the other.
“Dale cut down on me (in the trioval) and spun himself,” said Elliott, frustrated and angry at finishing a lapped 14th. “Clearly, I was under him. If I’d meant to spin him, I would have spun him, no ifs, ands, or buts. I had the quickest car. I had him covered and he tried to cut me off every way he could. And he ran into me in (Turn) 4 and cut my left-rear tire. He meant to take me out.”
Earnhardt had his own version of things. “Bill tried to wreck me twice,” he said after the first of his three all-star victories. “He tried to turn me through the trioval and then tried to spin me in Turn 4. Then, when the race was over, he tried to wreck me on the backstretch. That’s a little more than we should be doing. I think he’s a little upset.”
Despite clear evidence to the contrary, “the pass in the grass” quickly became a fact of life. Even Dale Earnhardt Jr., just 12 at the time, admits as much. “The pass in the grass is obviously not a pass,” he said on a recent NASCAR broadcast. “But it put Dad on the map and solidified the Intimidator image.”
Current championship contender Ross Chastain, not even born at the time, has come to accept what happened. The “no pass” realization hasn’t dampened his appreciation of what happened. “It’s one of those moments that’s unscripted and has withstood the test of time,” he said. (His last-lap pass at Martinsville last year is a legitimate top-10 moment). “If I see a clip of it on-line, I’m going to sit and watch it.”
Chris Buescher, another 2023 championship contender, remains awed by Earnhardt’s cool. “At that speed in those cars and as out of control as they were, to hold it together and run through there was a massive feat,” he recently said. “We all knew that Dale had car control, and this was one of those big moments that highlighted it. But I am a little confused by the ‘pass’ part of it.”
Frankly, he’s not alone. No luck (so far) on discovering who coined the catchy “pass in the grass” phrase, Tom Cotter of Charlotte’s marketing and PR staff said it wasn’t him. “Maybe a journalist or a TV guy,” he said recently. “I’d like to take credit, but it wasn’t me. Maybe (track general manager) Humpy Wheeler, but I don’t think so.
“It wasn’t until 10 months later that it came up again. One day at a staff meeting Humpy asked how we planned to capitalize on the ’87 Winston. Things had calmed down by then. People weren’t nearly as angry as they had been, so Humpy wanted to stir things up because we had The Winston again that May.”
Leading into the ’88 event, Cotter and his staff mailed out promotional boxes to the national media. Each contained a crushed Coors beer can for Elliott, a packet of grass seed and a $100 “invoice” for reseeding, and a crushed GM Goodwrench parts box for Earnhardt. (GM had replaced Wrangler on Earnhardt’s No. 3 Chevrolet).
The message was clear: remember what happened at the ’87 Winston. Or, rather, what didn’t happen.
