On February 18, 2001, Dale Earnhardt Sr., one of stock car racing’s most successful and influential drivers, died in a crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. The 49-year-old driver of the No. 3 Chevrolet had been a dominant figure in NASCAR for decades, and his death occurred during the sport’s most-watched race, amplifying the national impact. The Daytona 500 that year featured a closely contested finish. On the race’s final lap, as cars battled for position on the high-banked tri-oval, Earnhardt’s car made contact with other competitors and collided with an inside retaining wall in Turn 4. Emergency crews responded immediately and transported Earnhardt to nearby Halifax Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The official cause of death was reported as a basilar skull fracture. Earnhardt’s death was investigated by NASCAR and medical and safety experts. The incident intensified scrutiny of driver safety in stock car racing. In the years that followed, NASCAR implemented a series of significant safety changes, many of which were already under discussion but were accelerated by this crash. Key measures included wider adoption of head-and-neck restraint systems (HANS devices), strengthened seat and restraint designs, improved SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barrier installations around tracks, enhanced seat mounting and driver containment systems, and improvements to car chassis and cockpit protection standards. These changes have been credited with reducing fatalities and serious injuries in top-level NASCAR racing. The passing of Earnhardt also had immediate cultural and commercial reverberations. Fans filled the infield at Daytona and gathered at tracks across the country; teams and drivers publicly mourned; and broadcast coverage that had been celebrating the race’s finish shifted to cover the tragedy. The family and team released statements in the days after the event, and memorials and tributes followed across the sport. Earnhardt’s legacy—his 76 Cup Series wins, seven NASCAR Winston Cup championships shared as a record with Richard Petty and later Jimmie Johnson, and his status as an icon of stock car racing—was reassessed in light of his sudden death. While Earnhardt’s on-track accomplishments are well documented, his death marked a turning point in NASCAR’s approach to safety culture. The combination of immediate investigations, technological adoption, track modifications, and regulatory changes after 2001 produced a safer racing environment in subsequent seasons. Discussions about crash survivability, occupant protection, and emergency response procedures remain central to motorsport safety policy and engineering. Earnhardt’s death remains one of the most discussed and consequential moments in modern motorsports history. It is widely cited in accounts of how professional racing addressed head and neck protection, energy-absorbing barriers, and car structural standards. Though debated details exist around the exact crash dynamics and counterfactuals about what might have prevented the fatal injury, the factual record shows a clear causal link between the last-lap crash at Daytona and the acceleration of major safety reforms in NASCAR.