On February 18 , 1990 1990: It appears that Dale Earnhardt is about to end his Daytona 500 jinx. He’s put on a commanding show all day, leading for 155 laps, and is a mile from victory … when disaster strikes. His Chevy hits some road debris — it turns out to be a bell housing — and then he hears a pop. His right rear tire is cut. The race falls into the (last) lap of Derrike Cope, who had never won a NASCAR race before and hadn’t finished better than 27th in the Daytona 500. “We had a tire go right in front of the chicken-bone grandstands on the backstretch,” Earnhardt says. “I was just sitting there; they couldn’t catch me. “Derrike wins the race, but we beat them all day. They didn’t outrun us, they just lucked into it.”
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