Racing Movies - Blink of an Eye

If you can get through the first seven minutes of this film without tearing up you are not human and definitely not a human race fan. I think most of us are familiar with the Dale Earnhardt story, NASCAR legend killed in a seemingly innocuous crash at the Daytona 500 in 2001. ‘Blink of an Eye’ focuses on another side to this story, the story of Michael Waltrip, whose racing career was intertwined with the life and death of Earnhardt in the most incredible way.

In the first seven minutes of ‘Blink of an Eye’ we learn that Michael Waltrip raced in 462 NASCAR races without a win. That is until the 2001 Daytona 500 where he won his first race with some excellent blocking help from his team mate and team boss Dale Earnhardt. On the final lap as Waltrip is about to cross the line to take his first emotional NASCAR win Earnhardt is involved in the crash that ends his life. Unbelievably, another incredible twist to this story is that it was the first race where Darrell Waltrip joined the full time NASCAR commentary team, a role he points out he was really nervous about. As Michael races to the line for his first win we see his older brother Darrell commentate those final moments with tears of joy in his eyes. Waltrip begins to celebrate his first win and then we see the moment where he learns that his team boss, team mate and friend Dale “isn’t doing so good”. 18 years after those events Waltrip emotionally explains that people are capable of experiencing the emotions from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, he just doesn’t know of anyone who has experienced those extremes within seconds.

The film then moves on to focus on the career of Michael Waltrip, his relationship with Earnhardt and his brother Darrell. The film highlights what a successful driver Michael Wlatrip was, yet he was the butt of a lot of criticism because of the number of winless starts. For the record, people started making a big deal about Waltrip’s failure to win after around 150 starts. He would have to put up with this for another 300 plus races before the rhetoric changed. While this would have worn down many a lesser man Waltrip managed to turn it into something of a positive through producing several self-defacing commercials for one of his main sponsors NAPA auto parts. As an aside watching a montage of Michael Waltrip TV commercials is highly recommended, they are classic!

I don’t want too throw too many spoilers (man this is a real good pun in racing film reviews) out there with this film, but the story gets more incredible as it goes on. However, there is one other massive irony that comes to bear. In 1990 Michael Waltrip has a horror accident at Bristol, the type of crash that at first look appears unsurvivable. His brother Darrell joined the emergency crew to help Michael immediately after the crash and we again see him, teary eyed, giving an emotional message to camera that Michael is O.K. His exact words were “he’s a Waltrip, he’s got a pretty hard head.” Waltrip was largely unscathed from the crash but throughout the film he reflects on his feelings of guilt of surviving his terrible crash while Earnhardt was killed in one that looked significantly less severe. It does appear cruel, Michel’s perspective seems to be that he should have died and Earnhardt shouldn’t have and that if he could trade places he would. Jeeze that is some heavy stuff to carry around in your head all these years.

If you tried to calculate the odds the likelihood of the circumstances surrounding Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt you would end up with totally impossible likelihood of these events ever occurring. However, they did, and this film captured the essence of all of it perfectly. I still can’t decide whether Michael Waltrip is a lucky guy or an unlucky guy, from his perspective I think he falls on the side of lucky. He points out early in the film that he never got therapy but maybe making the film has provided some of that, which in turn gives viewers very authentic look at the true Michael Waltrip and the minds of racing drivers more generally. It's true "he's a Waltrip, he's got a pretty hard head" but he's also got a hell of a lot of heart(leys).