Sterling Marlin had to be one of the biggest surprises of the 2001 season, taking his Coors Light Dodge to a third-place finish in points. This despite the fact that he dealt with a flood of adversity for his involvement in Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash at Daytona. Marlin recently spoke with Stock Car Racing about the highs and lows, and his obvious goals for 2002.
SCR: Looking back at this time last year, you were getting a lot of criticism for the last lap wreck with Dale Earnhardt in the Daytona 500. How does being involved in something like that affect you?Marlin: I just knew I didn't do anything wrong. There were people criticizing me right after it happened, but I think once everybody stopped and took a look at the tape of the wreck and saw what happened, they had a change of heart. Dale Earnhardt Jr. stepped up and said it wasn't my fault and so did Michael Waltrip. I just think once everybody stopped and came to their senses, they realized it was just racing.
SCR: In the days following the crash, you received death threats. Did you ever ask yourself whether racing was more important than simply being safe with your wife and kids?Marlin: I never personally received a threat. It was more of people writing letters and making calls to our shop. I've had people who have wanted to kill me since high school, but really those threats were never made directly to me.
SCR: You battled through that early adversity to one of your best seasons in Winston Cup. How satisfying was that?Marlin: I really feel like it showed the strength of everybody we have on our race team, because we truly do have some quality guys working on these cars. Having good equipment and people, plus a good manufacturer behind you, that's all a driver can ask for to be able to be competitive. I felt like we were going to be good before the season ever started because we had improved so much over the winter. There were a lot of people who didn't give our team much of a chance, and that helped to light a fire in us to show them how good we really were.
SCR: What do you consider your biggest accomplishment in 2001, getting the first win for Dodge or finishing third in the final point standings?Marlin: Without question it would have to be winning at Michigan. We were so close to winning earlier in the year, it got kind of frustrating. Before I won Michigan, I'd been getting out of the car saying we should have won because we'd been so close. When we went back to Michigan, I was on a mission because we would have won the first race there if a late caution didn't come out. Everybody knew we were going to win, and sure enough when we got back to Michigan for the second time we had a pretty good old hot rod and finally got to pull into Victory Lane.
SCR: What do you consider the low point of the 2001 season?Marlin: We finished 30th or worse five times last year. I know there are a lot of "ifs" in racing, but I have to believe if you take three of those finishes out then we would have been right up there battling for the championship with Jeff Gordon. That is if nothing had happened to us and we didn't have those problems. I think that's something this team is going to build off of because we know every track we go to we have one of the best cars. We were third last year in the points, and if we can eliminate those mistakes in 2002 we're going to be right there this year battling for the championship.