richie evans @ bristol.

[rapidroman]

went to bristol. only my second tour race since 10/24/85. spent the day walking through the crowd and greeting every richie evans shirt/hat bearing person i saw. tried to get to a big gent in the pits wearing an evans shirt. 50-60's perhaps. never got to him. went to the drivers meeting and spoke to all the drivers. had my son evan with me. my daughter went to ryan preece and asked, "do you know who richie evans is?" ryan said, "of course i know who richie evans is..." my daughter went to mike stefanik and showed him her richie evans hat. mike said, "he was the best. he helped me alot when i started out. he was a good guy." jamie tomaino had awesome words too for richie. before the truck race, the roving reporter that puts you on the jumbo-tron screen came by and interviewed our family. to all the crowd, we said, "we love richie evans and Jesus Christ." it was awesome. the people i met wearing his shirts were so awesome. real. precious. touching. i told my wife that my next race i want to give a one hundred dollar bill, and the Gospel, to every person i see wearing an evans shirt. she said, "that's fine, but start with the four of us first." well, richie was well represented at bristol. still. amazing. 24 years later. wow, i miss him.

[uticamike]

Richie's long shadow still is quite evident today. I've been to races this year at Dunn Tire, Shangri-La, Waterford and Monadnock and saw Richie shirts, hats etc at all these. Oldsters who saw him and youngsters who wish they had. You just don't see many Cook, MT, Geoff, Bugs, Flemke items any more and that's not to diminish their accomplishments, it just speaks volumes about the higher plane Richie was on. RE was/is/always will be the King.

[Axel]

This is a cool post and a good story!

Long live the king!

[Jaws]

I saw that interview on the Jumbo-tron, very cool! They wanted to talk about trucks and we heard about the modified race!!

I also saw least 1 Richie Evans T-shirt. Yes Richie is a well loved today as when he was alive. Its the passion of modied fans, like no other!

[ModTourMan]

I've gotta tell you, if you never saw Richie race, or got the chance to meet him and spend some time, you missed a really great race driver and personality....

There will never be another one like him. :)

He was easily the best I've ever seen...and I've seen some great ones. I had the pleasure of studying him pretty close when he raced weekly on the bullring at New Egypt. He was a true master. Besides being FAST, he could maneuver a Modified and position his car strategically better than anybody.
That coupled with the ability to build and maintain his cars during a brutal schedule makes him a legend.