rec.autos.simulators

Another weird NASCAR.COM tidbit - they were the first to announce his death,
just after 6:30 EST.  I had just gotten home from the store, and I was
checking all over the place for news - even NASCAR's front page only said
"Earnhardt to Hospital".  When I clicked the link, the headline was
"Earnhardt fatally injured at Daytona", and mention in the story of "massive
chest wounds".  The time on the story was 6:33 EST.

I immediately called my dad (he lives in North Carolina, I'm in
Massachusetts) to see if he'd heard.  He hadn't, so I went back to the
NASCAR site to get the exact wording, and the front page now said "Earnhardt
Injured".  The story now had a headline reading "Earnhardt Injured at
Daytona", and the first paragraph was completely changed.  This wasn't five
minutes later.

For the next twenty minutes, I hoped that somebody had jumped the gun,
gotten it wrong.  Then the story started to show up at other sites -
Speedvision, ESPN - then on TV on CNN, finally on ESPN as well.  Through all
of this, the NASCAR site continued to only say that he was "injured".

I can only imagine that somebody at NASCAR.COM got the news and put the
story up, then was told by NASCAR to pull it until after the official
announcement, which came at 7:00pm EST.  It made for a very surreal
half-hour, as I started to wonder if I'd imagined the original story.

Sadly, I hadn't.  I was never a fan, but I'll miss him all the same.

Rick

Rick,

I think this were one and a half of the most disgusting hours of TV.
Except CNN, everyone prematurely shot out news,
without waiting for official confirmation.

It was just disgusting.

Christoph

I had the exact same thing happen to me.  I was at nascar.com and had the
article open and clicked on refresh to see if they had added any information.
Well, I had the tv on at the same time hoping for mroe information.  So I look
at the screen and it said that he had died.  I starting feeling dizzy simply
because I couldn't believe what was happening.  I told my friend, a fan of
Earnhardt about what I read, so he and I both go to nascar.com and sure enough
they changed it back to just injured.  That made me think that I had imagined
the whole thing.  Yesterday was just so horrible and so unbelievable.

R.I.P. #3

  One thing this should teach us...the organizing bodies, be-it Nascar, FIA,
CART etc will NOT be the first or the most forthcoming of any tragic event.
While Speedvision would only say injured, and nascar referred to the
hospital,
USA today and other 'news' sites had the grim news.
dave henrie