Larry McReynolds has seen a lot throughout his NASCAR Cup Series broadcasting career with Fox. Sunday’s Daytona 500, set for a 1:30 p.m. ET start, will mark his 22nd time calling that race and the start of his 25th season as a full-time NASCAR on Fox broadcaster. But his broadcasting career got off to a very difficult start.
The first Cup Series race McReynolds called was the 2001 Daytona 500, which is most remembered today for Dale Earnhardt’s death. This week, McReynolds spoke to Awful Announcing’s Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast to discuss his broadcasting career and more. He also spoke to Contes about what it was like to be on the call for that fatal 2001 crash.
McReynolds said that the first Daytona 500 wound up being one of the hardest days of his career. But he said up until the moment Earnhardt hit the wall, the broadcast was going flawlessly.
“We were having probably one of the best 500s that there had been in a long time. Tons of lead changes, hard racing. We did have a big crash on the back straight away. And Michael Waltrip, Darryl’s brother, who had never won a Cup race, other than an all-star race at Charlotte, he’s in his first race driving for DEI [Dale Earnhardt Incorporated], the 15 NAPA car.
“And it looks like he’s going to win the race. And Dale’s back there running third, and it was a flawless Daytona 500 broadcast. Everything was as perfect as you could ask it to be until that final corner of the final lap.”
For McReynolds, the initial thoughts were only about how Earnhardt would react to the crash post-race.
“I remember seeing Dale hit the wall, and I was thinking to myself, ‘He ain’t gonna be happy about that. He’s gonna be happy that Michael Waltrip won this race because everybody had asked him, ‘What do you think in hiring Michael Waltrip? He can’t win a race.’ And here he’s going to win the Daytona 500. I’m sure he’s happy about that, but I’m sure he’s gonna be pretty ticked off about this wreck in turn four.'”
Even with that on-air focus, though, McReynolds said his thoughts kept turning to Earnhardt.
“I remember focusing on my job at hand, but I kept looking towards turn four. And I remember seeing Ken Schrader pull up there with his car because he had kind of got involved in the wreck, too. And I saw him frantically waving his arms to the emergency workers, and I went ‘That’s not a good sign,’ to myself, thinking to myself. And then I saw them put a tarp up, and that’s never a good sign.”
McReynolds told Contes that Mike Joy deserves massive credit for how the broadcast handled the Earnhardt situation, especially as he and Waltrip were so new to the booth.
“The best thing that Darryl and I had going for us was Mike Joy. Mike took the ball and because he’s the consummate professional, he knew what to say. And even during a commercial break, he looked at Darryl and I and said ‘Don’t speculate nothing. Only state facts. But let me handle it.’
“And thank God we had Mike Joy, because here we are, our very first broadcast, and we’re being baptized by fire. We just possibly had the Elvis Presley of NASCAR either seriously injured or maybe even killed in this crash.”
Even after the postrace broadcast wrapped up, McReynolds still didn’t know the outcome of the crash, but he suspected it would be bad.
“We left the booth after we went off there and I actually walked to the airport. The airport’s right there behind the backstretch, and after the 500, it’s a lot easier to walk to the airport than to try to get a rental car. And I remember kind of walking with my head down, and I just kept replaying it over and over and over and over. And I just again kept hoping for the best, hoping my cell phone was gonna ring and said ‘Well, he’s got a broke leg or a broke arm.’ The phone never rang.”
He said he eventually found out about Earnhardt’s death while waiting for his flight.
“I remember getting to the airport and I remember going to the little cafe right outside the gate to grab a quick bite to eat. And I was actually sitting there with a guy by the name of Kevin Clark, who was our chief spotter for NASCAR on Fox. And he and I were sitting there talking and my phone rang, and it was Neil Goldberg, who was our producer at that time.
“And he said, ‘Larry, you may have already heard, I’m hoping I’m telling you for the first time, that you didn’t have to hear it from a race fan or something.’ But he said ‘Dale didn’t make it.’ And I remember calling my wife, because she loved Dale to death, before I got on the airplane, and telling her.”
The impact of that Earnhardt crash still lingers for McReynolds. He also said that the whole sport is different in the wake of that.
“It was a day that changed NASCAR, I’ve always said. When Elvis Presley died, rock and roll didn’t stop, but it was different, it changed. And when Dale Earnhardt passed away, NASCAR didn’t stop: heck, we went right on the next week to Rockingham. But it was different, and it’s still different today.”
McReynolds’ full podcast episode is available now here. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. For more content, subscribe to AA’s YouTube page.
