Dave Marcis (Dale Earnhardt Survives)

David Marcis (born March 1, 1941) is an American former professional stock car racing driver on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit whose career spanned five decades. Marcis won five times over this tenure, twice at Richmond, including his final win in 1982, and collected 94 top-fives and 222 top-tens. His best championship results were second in 1975, fifth in 1978, sixth in 1974, 1976 and 1982, and ninth in 1970, 1980 and 1981.
Marcis competed in the Daytona 500 every year from 1968 until 1999. The 2002 Ford 400 was the last time Marcis raced in NASCAR. He is currently an engine developer, engine builder and chief engineer at Earnhardt-Childress Racing.
== Career overview ==
Marcis' career is notable in the history of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. While he is best known as the last of the non-factory supported independent owner drivers, he is also known as one of the top drivers of the 1970s. During his career, he drove for series championship car owners Nord Krauskopf and Rod Osterlund. Marcis retired in second place on the all-time starts list with 883 behind Richard Petty. Ricky Rudd, Terry Labonte and Dale Earnhardt have since passed him on the list. Marcis often owned and drove the No. 71 car. He finished eight times in the top-10 season drivers' points.
=== 1970s ===
Marcis finished as high as second in the season standing in 1975 driving Nord Krauskopf's K & K Dodge Charger in the first year for NASCAR's modern standard of calculating points. Despite driving for some of the top teams of the day, Marcis opted to field his own teams following his sudden departure from Osterlund Racing after the 1978 season. Marcis was replaced by future seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt, who began his rookie campaign the following year. Former crew Harry Hyde once said of Marcis, "he had the talent to be a champion, if only he weren't so stubborn."
When Dale Earnhardt came into the Cup series as a rookie in 1979, Earnhardt was messing with Dave on the track at Martinsville. Dave had had enough and he spun Earnhardt on the back stretch. He let Earnhardt know right away that he wasn’t going to take anything off of him.
“Dave was one of the first owners to get a flow bench,” said Livengood, who finished his career working on Richard Childress’ engine development team. “We learned a lot with that bench. Before, you did it the way you thought was right, but we had no way of testing except on the track.”
“Dewey always worked the flowbench, making different tapers in the intake,” said Marcis. “I still got manifolds in the shop that he cut up and welded, then sandblasted so you couldn’t tell they’d been apart."
=== 1980s ===
Marcis experienced moderate success as an owner driver during the 1980s. In 1981, he went upside down during a race at Atlanta after hitting two tractor tires at the entrance of pit road while trying to avoid a spinning Tim Richmond. The highlight of Marcis' career as an owner-driver was winning at the old Richmond Fairgrounds in 1982 driving a very un-raceable looking 81 Chevy Malibu. Marcis was a lap down, but made up the lap when the race leader Joe Ruttman spun out and Marcis passed him. All three drivers that were ahead of Marcis pitted and he assumed the lead as it began to rain. The race was called complete as darkness set in, and Marcis was declared the winner. Marcis described the win, "I wasn't praying for rain, but I told the guys when I got out of the car (during the break before the race was canceled) that if the good Lord wanted to help an independent, this was his chance." "It was one of my greatest moments in racing," Marcis said. "I had even built my own engine for that race." From that point Marcis' team gradually became less competitive as more well-funded teams found their way into the series. Marcis was occasionally known to moonlight for other car owners such as Larry Hedrick (later of Hedrick Motorsports). Often Marcis would still field his own car, usually with Jim Sauter behind the wheel.
=== 1990s-2000 ===
In the 1990 Pepsi 400 practice Marcis crashed into Darrell Waltrip's car. Both were injured in the crash and Waltrip missed six races. Marcis' car was destroyed and they did not have a backup, so they made a partnership to run J. D. McDuffie's Pontiac when McDuffie failed to qualify. Since Marcis was injured he was replaced in the first laps of the race by McDuffie as a relief driver but since Marcis started the race he was credited with the 20th-place finish.
Late in the 1992 season, Larry Hedrick Motorsports hired Marcis to replace Greg Sacks in their #41 car, he ran 7 races before being released. He returned to his car, who he had hired Jim Sauter to run.
Near the end of his career Marcis landed the first major Internet sponsor in Winston Cup, Prodigy Internet. This company sponsored Marcis as an associate and primary sponsor between 1994 and 1996, to where at the 1996 Daytona 500 Marcis was able to display a showcar, a first for his career. Marcis was a close friend to then seven-time Cup champion Dale Earnhardt and helped set up Earnhardt’s car before his Daytona victory in 1998. 
Marcis had a horrific accident at Pocono in June 1999 when, after getting loose in turn two on the 91st lap, he overcorrected it to the right and slammed the wall head-on at a high rate of speed, sending his car airborne and completely destroying it. He climbed out of the wreckage without injury. Marcis was frequently the test driver for the Richard Childress GM Goodwrench No. 3 of his friend Dale Earnhardt during the prime of his career. This agreement with Childress was made by Marcis to help fund his own race team, although he rarely had the time to test his own equipment. 
=== 2001-2002 ===
From 2001-2002 Dave Marcis Racing, Dave Marcis's team, was made a de-facto satellite team of Richard Childress Racing, being supplied engines and parts almost entirely by Childress, allowing him to qualify for every race and perform above most people's expectations in his last years, with no DNQs in 2001 or 2002. Marcis qualified for his last Daytona 500 before finishing his career at the 2002 Ford 400, setting a record for most Daytona 500s run with 34. Goodyear awarded him with a special bronze trophy shaped like his signature wingtip shoes and Goodyear hat. Marcis was a test driver for the IROC and the Nextel Cup series after his retirement from racing competition in 2002. He is currently an engine developer, engine builder and chief engineer at Earnhardt-Childress Racing, and refuses to retire despite reaching 80 years old in 2021, with Earnhardt commenting at his 80th birthday celebrations "You might be the only man I know more stubborn then me." He currently resides with his wife in the Asheville, North Carolina, area.
== Relationship With Dale Earnhardt ==
Dave Marcis, the wing-tipped shoe wearing wonder from Wausau, Wisconsin, and the man who would become The Intimidator, Dale Earnhardt, were an unlikely pair but that’s also what made them so close. “When I first heard of Dale racing down here, he wasn’t in NASCAR yet, but he was running the short tracks and had a good reputation – but he also had a rough reputation at the same time,” Marcis said. “A lot of people would say to me ‘you ought to go run this track and race against Earnhardt.’”
They would eventually do so on several short tracks before racing against each other in several hundred NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup races. Marcis made his NASCAR debut in the 1968 Daytona 500, while Earnhardt made his NASCAR debut in the 1975 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
In 1978, Marcis was near the end of a one-year deal driving for owner Rod Osterlund when he found out that his contract would not be renewed. His replacement for 1979 was Earnhardt, who would go on to win his first of seven Cup championships in 1980.
When Dale Earnhardt came into the Cup series as a rookie in 1979, Earnhardt was messing with Dave on the track at Martinsville. Dave had had enough and he spun Earnhardt on the back stretch. He let Earnhardt know right away that he wasn’t going to take anything off of him.
Marcis wasn’t upset that his friend would replace him behind the wheel. Rather, he looked forward to returning to his roots as an independent team owner/operator and wished Earnhardt the best of luck. But there were a few instances over their quarter-century of racing against each other in NASCAR where that friendship was tested, with one time in particular, Marcis recalled.
“We were at Martinsville and Dale was hammering at me and hammering at me, and I got ticked off about it and spun him out,” Marcis said, adding with a laugh, “he wouldn’t talk to me for two months. He was mad. “But you know what, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I had to stand up for myself and I can’t let people run over me because if I did, then I was going to have trouble all the time."
“Finally one day, he walked up to me and grabbed me around the neck, had a big old grin on his face and said, ‘You know that deal at Martinsville?’ And I said, ‘Yes sir.’ And he said, ‘I had that coming. My daddy always told me if you have any problem with anybody, don’t carry it down the road. I guess you had a problem and you didn’t carry it down the road.’”
When Neil Bonnett was killed in a crash while practicing for the 1994 Daytona 500, Earnhardt turned to his friend Marcis to fill Bonnett’s shoes as his test driver. “We became the biggest, greatest friends, hunted and fished together,” Marcis said. “After we lost Neil Bonnett, who had done a lot of testing for Dale, I did all of Dale’s testing. I was quite honored to have tested the car, worked with Larry McReynolds and all the guys on the team on the car Dale won the Daytona 500 with and he thanked me in victory circle for that testing."
“We were at Talladega one day testing and he asked what was I doing tomorrow?” Marcis recalled. “I told him I’d be home at my shop, getting (his own) car and working on it to get it ready to come back here." 
“Dale wanted me to test his car for him but I told him I couldn’t, and I only had a couple of guys at that time. He didn’t say no more about it.
“Then that evening, when the track closed, he came up to me, pulled three $100 bills out of his pocket, stuffed it in my shirt pocket and said ‘Here, take your guys out to eat tonight and this will help pay for your motel room. I already called the people at the motel you’re staying at and told them you were staying another night,’ and then just walked away. So what are you going to do? The next day, where was I? I was at Talladega, testing for Dale.”
Earnhardt was proud to call Marcis a friend, to the point where unbeknownst to his buddy, agreed to put both of them on a set of racing trading cards in 1995, the only time The Intimidator did so with another driver. “Earnhardt had some trading cards made with his picture on one side and my picture on the other,” Marcis said. “I don’t know why he ever did make them. It says on the cards, ‘Dual Jewels.’ He never told me about why he did it.”
When Marcis, then 60 years old, managed to qualify for the 2001 Daytona 500, he hung out with Earnhardt for the rest of the week, being concerned for his friend when Earnhardt wrecked hard on the last lap, being thankful Earnhardt was uninjured. Likewise, Earnhardt, realizing how bad crashes still were even with the gen 4 cars, worried about his good buddy, who was 11 years his senior, and proposed Marcis hang up his fire suit for good and come to work for him.
“Dale was telling me that week that I need to retire,” Marcis said. “He was going to buy some hunting land around the country in different places and we talked about putting together a race team for Kerry (Earnhardt, Dale’s oldest son).
“Dale wanted me to look at hunting land, maybe even hunt it, and decide if it’s worth buying it because he said, ‘I’m going to start spending my souvenir money on hunting land. You’ve accomplished so much, there’ll never be anybody that’s ever going to accomplish what you’ve done with what you’ve done it with. You need to think about retiring and then I’m going to put you to work.’”
Marcis thought over what Earnhardt had said throughout the season, and by the mid season the 60-year old veteran decided Dale was right, and announced 2002 to be his final season on the Thursday before the 2001 Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway. Following his retirement in 2002, Marcis opened Street Rods by Dave Marcis in partnership with his son-in-law, Sam Beam, at Asheville (NC) Speed Equipment. The shop features a chassis dyno given to him by Dale Earnhardt and has built a number of tricked-out street machines, including a ’34 Chevy with an SB2 engine.
Along with his hobby hotrod shop, after his retirement Earnhardt did put Marcis to use, making him the engine developer, engine builder and chief engineer at DEI, helping make Earnhardt's team the fastest superspeedway team of the early-mid 2000's. Marcis refuses to retire despite reaching 80 years old in 2021, with Earnhardt commenting at his 80th birthday celebrations "You might be the only man I know more stubborn then me."
Category:Dale Earnhardt Survives