DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The white No. 3 decals are no bigger than a fist and sit just above and behind the driver's side window of all the Richard Childress Racing team's Chevrolets. Crew members wore black baseball caps with the same No. 3 logo and driver Tony Stewart strolled through the Daytona International Speedway garage Friday afternoon clutching one of the prized caps himself.
Friday marked exactly 10 years since the driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 3, seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt, was killed in Turn 4 of this track after crashing on the last lap of the Daytona 500. The speedway will remember the NASCAR icon with a moment of silence and fans will hold up three fingers on the third lap of Sunday's Daytona 500.
But for such an overwhelming event, it has been a subdued, subtle and suiting anniversary.
For the past week, Earnhardt's competitors, teammates and friends have shared emotional stories about that fateful Sunday afternoon. But the one person you won't see participate in any contrived memorial this weekend is Earnhardt's son, Dale Jr. No hat, no decal. None necessary.
"I'd personally rather just watch it and stand on the sidelines,'' Earnhardt said of the various tributes and memorials planned for the weekend.
"It's more fun for me hearing how other people reflect, hearing other people's stories. I know how I feel in my heart and I don't feel a real need to discuss that a lot.
"I want to do what's right and honor him, but I don't need to do it in front of a bunch of people. I feel like he carries his own weight and he doesn't need me being a part of the celebration or whatever you want to call it. I don't want to take away from it in any way.''
During a media visit to his Hendrick Motorsports team headquarters in Concord, N.C., last month, Earnhardt was thoughtful, forthright and unguarded to the point of seeming vulnerable when asked questions about how he remembered his father and how he expected to feel this week when so much attention will be devoted to his dad.
At points during the interview, Earnhardt's voice would trail off quietly as he explained his desire to be spectator and not participant when the series arrived at Daytona for the season-opening Daytona 500. At other times Earnhardt would stand up straight and laugh recalling the good memories.
"With the anniversary coming up, I understand my connection to him and I understand I might be able to shed some kind of light on what the day means and how it makes me feel. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that we remember him and we remember him for what he was on the track and what he did for us."
-- Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
"I'd rather not talk about it personally,'' Earnhardt said softly. "So I don't try to extend the answers to the questions.
"You guys know what he was to the sport. What's important to me is that he is remembered for what he was on and off the track and it has nothing to do with me and shouldn't have anything to do with me.
"I'm not even in the equation. It's about his life.
"With the anniversary coming up, I understand my connection to him and I understand I might be able to shed some kind of light on what the day means and how it makes me feel. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that we remember him and we remember him for what he was on the track and what he did for us.''
Since his father's death, Earnhardt has had both great adulation and great expectation thrust upon his shoulders. Ten years ago, he was a 26-year old full of promise and high hopes driving a fast race car for his dad's team -- living large and largely carefree.
Then, in a moment, his world changed. And Earnhardt really never got a chance to catch his breath. In fact, amazingly he raced the very next week at Rockingham, N.C., crashing out early.
"After that happened, I never wanted to see another race car again,'' Earnhardt said of his father's accident. "I went (to Rockingham) because I felt a responsibility to go but I didn't want to be there. For about a week, I got to thinking, 'What else am I going to do?' My dad gave me this opportunity and I would be a fool to squander it.''
"It was all crazy at the time. You couldn't think. I knew I didn't want to be at Rockingham. I knew that.''
"I could have cared less that I crashed,'' he said, looking down. "It was embarrassing ... but I really had no interest in being there. It was embarrassing to tear that car up, but it didn't break my heart any worse than it was broken. I couldn't feel any worse than I already did at the moment.''
So Earnhardt has chosen instead to cherish the times with his dad and try to move forward -- even as he shoulders a heavy transfer of his father's massive popularity and high expectation.
But listening to him talk about his father, it sounds like any regular father-and-son relationship. Dale Earnhardt was not the seven-time NASCAR champion to his son. He was dad.
"When I think about my dad, and I don't think it's intentional, but every time I think of him it's about something fun or something funny or when he was getting on me or picking on me,'' Earnhardt said, breaking into a smile.
"Or when I did something he didn't like that I thought was funny, those are always good memories. I did a lot of things that pissed him off that I thought were hilarious and especially the fact that he got upset.''
He recalled a race weekend when he and a former public relations representative bought a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter and lay in their hotel room eating peanut butter sandwiches and watching reruns of the original Batman shows.
"Dad came in there about halfway into it and as he opened the door he was hollering, 'You've got 15 minutes to get ready to go eat.'
"Once he came in the door and saw what we were doing, he was really upset because we weren't more professional. He thought we were kinda lazy. We laughed. We had tons of moments like that when I was running the Nationwide Series ... times when we were lazy or goofy and Dad would just get so mad for us not taking things more seriously. We were just having fun.''
The fun has been less frequent in the years since his father died. Earnhardt left his father's team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc., in a well-publicized rift with his stepmother Teresa Earnhardt. And even after signing with the sport's champion Hendrick Motorsports team three years ago, Earnhardt has only one win -- two years ago -- and has missed making the Chase for the Championship the past two years.
Coming this week to Daytona International Speedway -- which Earnhardt still speaks so fondly of -- is as much about getting his own career on track again as it is pausing to mark 10 years since his father's death.
He thinks about his father every day. He doesn't need an "anniversary" or newspaper front pages, television specials or tribute magazines.
"I've seen about every picture I can see,'' Earnhardt said. "I've got books at home of him. I've got DVDs of shows made on him and I've seen about all one can see. Nothing I could watch would be new to me. You could tell the story many ways and I've seen it all before."
It's not to say that Earnhardt isn't grateful of the outpouring of love and respect heaped upon his father this weekend.
"Even after his death, you just want to respect him and do what's right by him,'' Earnhardt said. "I just want to stay on the sideline and appreciate the day, appreciate his life and watch him be honored by whatever people may do.
"I'd just like to watch what ideas they come up with. I will enjoy those things and I'll be fine. But I'd just like to stand on the sidelines and watch it go by.''
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