Scorched: Bill Simpson used to set himself on fire to prove a point. Now he's fanning flames in a dispute over Dale Earnhardt's death.

• Author: Goldberg, Steve
• Position: Cover Story

With a lap to go in last year's Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt seemed to settle for third place. Despite his reputation for knocking others out of his way in pursuit of the checkered flag, he wasn't so much trying to pass the leaders as to protect their leads. Then again, both those cars belonged to his DEI team. Michael Waltrip drove one. His son, Dale Jr., drove the other.

Daytona had special meaning for Earnhardt. It had taken him 19 tries to win NASCAR's premier race. When he did, in 1998, even the crews of the 42 other teams lined the path to victory lane to congratulate him. Now, three years later, he had been running strong, taking the lead several times. But, as the cameras followed Waltrip across the finish line, Earnhardt's No. 3 car slammed into the wall.

Watching the race on TV at the annual Daytona 500 party he threw at Kelly's Pub Two in Indianapolis, Bill Simpson, chairman of Simpson Performance Products Inc., was sure his old friend was fine. Simpson, a maker of safety equipment, had seen much worse wrecks. Hell, back when he was driving, he'd been in much worse wrecks. Plus, Earnhardt was strapped into his car with a belt made by Simpson's company, and thousands of tests had told Simpson it wouldn't fail.

He had already left the restaurant when Desiree Kirby, one of his sales reps, called from Daytona. Her voice trembled as she told him something that wouldn't be made public for nearly two hours: Dale was dead. Get over to Halifax Medical Center, he told her. Double-check it. She assured him her information was right.

Several days later, NASCAR announced that a broken left lap belt -- later identified as having been manufactured by Simpson Performance -- had been found in Earnhardt's car. In the days and weeks that followed, Simpson's life would be threatened by fans. His house on Lake Norman would be vandalized. The tires of his car would be slashed. Even worse, his reputation, built over more than four decades of building equipment to protect race drivers, would be sullied. To his mind, NASCAR had blamed him for Earnhardt's death.

The integrity of Earnhardt's seat belt -- in Simpson's eyes, his integrity -- had been called into question. Since that day, he has been telling nearly anyone who will listen that his belt didn't fail, that it couldn't fail if installed properly. NASCAR, he claims, made him a scapegoat. In February -- five days before the anniversary of Earnhardt's death -- he sued NASCAR in state court in Indiana, where he now lives. His battle with the race-sanctioning body has affected the company he founded and still owns a third of. If nothing else, it has prevented Simpson Performance from moving beyond the bad publicity surrounding Earnhardt's death. What's more, some Winston Cup teams have dropped its gear. Before this year' Daytona 500, he said, "We're going to have 16 or 17 cars out of 43." In last year's race, "there were 39 cars that had 100% Simpson stuff on them and the drivers in them."

But worst of all, Simpson's quest for vindication has led him into self-imposed and, perhaps, self-defeating exile. He quit the company he had founded and built into the dominant maker of racing-safety equipment and left North Carolina. He has started a new company to make safety gear, but it'll likely be years before it can have the influence and reach of Simpson Performance -- if it ever does.

"Bill certainly needs to be part of the scene," says I-lumpy Wheeler, president of Speedway Motorsports, which owns Lowe's Motor Speedway and five other tracks. "The people that are pushing safety are far, far outnumbered by the people who are pushing, 'Let's go faster.' That's why you need a Bill Simpson in there."

In his self-published autobiography, Racing Safely, Living Dangerously, Simpson says his life's mission is to protect race drivers. Even his critics wouldn't dispute the contributions he has made. And he has plenty of critics. A hot-tempered hell-raiser, he has spent his career...