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"Dale Earnhardt Jr. is to stock car racing what Elvis was to rock & roll and being Southern is a big part of that," says Ferris. "And of course he is part of the first family of NASCAR. It's a legacy, and family is a powerful institution in the South."
"He seems like one of us," says Schwandt, the fan from Mississippi. She and her family attended the Aaron's 499 in Talladega, specifically because it's a great track for Junior. "He wins so much at Talladega so we know if we come here we're going to have a good race day."
But can Junior simultaneously be "one of us" and NASCAR's representative People magazine's 2004 list of the 50 Most Beautiful People?
"I think he's gotten ruint," said a fan at Talladega who wouldn't give his name. "I've been in the garage area a few times and seen him get all bowed up when people ask for his autograph so I decided I wouldn't ever ask. But my wife really wanted it, so I got up my nerve today and asked him. I made sure it was after qualifying."
His brother standing nearby in a red #8-emblazoned hat rolls his eyes. "I don't know what you're so pissed about. He signed it."
"Yeah, but I even told him I was sorry for asking. And he never said a word, just acted all pissed off."
Like any good disciple, the brother looks for a loophole that will allow him to keep the faith: "You shouldn't have bothered him. It's your fault. He doesn't want to be bothered by all the fans."
Nonetheless, the 1.3 million votes Junior received in last year's online vote for most popular driver shows that he has fans to burn.
The race that day in Talladega ended in the worst possible way for many diehard Southern fans. Not only did it end under caution, Jeff Gordon beat Junior. Notoriously NASCAR's rowdiest, the fans at Talladega embarrassed themselves by pelting the track with beer cans and garbage to protest the result. Nowhere is Gordon's masterful intrusion on the South's favorite pastime more keenly resented than Talladega.
Behind the booing he gets during driver introductions and the proliferation of anti-Gordon displays in the RV village next to tracks, is the mostly unarticulated sense of injury many Southern fans feel over his extraordinary early success in the Winston/Nextel Cup. Some fans claim he's gay (apparently the worst possible insult Southern machismo can muster) and others say he's two-faced, all nice for the cameras and an asshole in reality, but the heart of the problem is that he won too much too soon and against Dale Earnhardt in particular. Earnhardt never won another championship following Gordon's first in 1995. Dethroning the man with near God-like status in the South was a bad PR move.
While John Shelton Reed traces the end of country music as a truly Southern institution to Olivia Newton John snagging a Country Music Award in 1973, the beginning of the end of the South's hold on NASCAR must surely have been 1989, Jeff Gordon's rookie year.
The Californian opened the door for more like him. Car/team owners now are more likely to scout out new blood in the ranks of open wheel drivers, and for good reason. Something about running open wheel on dirt seems to be the right training to whip ass in Nextel Cup racing. Just look at Matt Kenseth (reigning champion), Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Newman, and Tony Stewart. The list keeps growing.
"For the most part, the ones succeeding are coming from USAC, from dirt tracks. Guys who know how to drive a car on the edge of out of control," says Smith.
Still, with Junior's unparalleled popularity, you'd think more team owners would be looking for the next hot young Southern driver. Problem is, they may very well be looking and coming up empty handed.
"Southern drivers are still coming up the traditional way -- through stock car racing on local tracks, then trucks and then the Busch series," says Smith. Apparently that traditional approach isn't working anymore.
Gordon also inadvertently redefined the off-track component of a driver's job. Before him, sponsors pretty much just expected their drivers to win. But Gordon showed them what a well-groomed, well-spoken driver from middle America could do -- get into middle American wallets. For the rest of the country, he was the first accessible NASCAR champion, one who talks and walks like them. The housewives think he's attractive and the kids like his non-threatening persona. He may well have been the first champion to know which fork to use during the big championship dinner at the Waldorf Astoria.
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