I have dreaded the coming of this weekend for 25 years. As hard as it may seem to believe, it truly has been a quarter-century since, as then-NASCAR Vice President Mike Helton somberly told the world, "This is undoubtedly one of the toughest announcements that I've personally ever had to make, but after the accident in Turn 4 at the end of the Daytona 500, we've lost Dale Earnhardt" in a last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500.