You have to know Dale Inman to appreciate him. And most of all, you have to brush aside his sometimes harshly driven words.
His best friend-other than his wife Mary-is Richard Petty. The two were driver and crew chief throughout most of their careers. But sometimes in private they would go at each other like pit bulls, kidding for the most part.
Soon after Petty retired as a driver, things were not going so well. "I guess I'll have to get back in the car and drive," the King of stock car racing said one afternoon.
"We'd won a lot more races if you had drove the car when you were in it," Inman remarked.
Petty smiled as he looked at a bystander. "And you know, I'd probably have won a lot more races if I'd ever had a crew chief."
Inman was strong-arm of the garage area before he retired at the end of the 1998 season. He would walk up, twist your arm, bring you to your knees and ask, "What do you think would happen if I was mad at you?"
He is truly one of the last characters of the sport. That is why it was so special this fall at Darlington with Inman going into the Stock Car Hall of Fame. Also inducted were team owner Bud Moore, promoter Ed Otto, and crew chief Leonard Wood, the one Inman says is the smartest mechanic in racing.
Inman captured eight Winston Cup championships during his career, more than any other crew chief or driver. He won seven with Petty, and the 1984 title with Terry Labonte.
Inman and Petty are first cousins. Their mothers are sisters. He grew up in racing with the Petty family. In school, he was a year ahead of Richard. He played halfback on the Randleman football team and Richard played guard.
He began going to races with Lee, Richard, and Maurice in 1950. After he graduated from high school in 1954, he went to work at Western Electric in Greensboro.
"Richard ran his first race in July of 1958 at Columbia, South Carolina. I was there," Inman says. "Richard finished sixth, but before the race we were not sure that he would not get tired. Joe Weatherly was there and without a ride, so we had him standing by in case we needed a relief driver. The signal for relief is for the driver to touch his helmet. Well, Richard kept hitting his helmet as he would come by the pits. I thought he wanted Weatherly. After the race he said his head was itching."
In 1959, the Army drafted Inman for two years. "I was in France, about 60 miles south of Paris. I picked up a Stars & Stripes newspaper one day and on the front cover was a picture of Lee (Petty) and Johnny Beauchamp locked together and going over the fourth turn wall at Daytona." That was the first Inman knew about the wreck that ended Lee's driving career.
Inman, who joined Petty Enterprises full-time in 1963, left the team in 1981 and returned in '86. During those years he worked for Rod Osterlund, Jim Stacy, and Billy Hagan. With Osterlund and Stacy, Dale Earnhardt and Tim Richmond were his drivers. With Hagan it was Labonte.
Inman always respected Richard, but he probably would rather that be kept a secret. "Richard knew how to get next to me. After I told him I was leaving the team in '81, he looked at me like he was going to cry. 'Dale,' he said, 'when I go off down into one of those turns at 170 mph, who am I going to depend on so I know that all the bolts are tight?' I went home and cried," Inman says.
Getting a parking place inside North Wilkesboro Speedway became a ritual. I would arrive at the track just after daylight on race morning and park in a certain spot. Soon Inman would come and get in my vehicle. Later Jimmy Spencer would get in the back seat.
Inman and I were reminiscing about a '70s race at the track where Richard and Bobby Allison beat on each other until their cars would hardly run. Spencer, all excited by the story, bounced about in the back seat. "Now, that's real racing," he said. "Gosh, I wish I had been here back then."
Inman was in the middle of a sentence. He stopped. "You're not tough enough. You would not have made it." And he picked up right where he left off, leaving Spencer nearly speechless.