It's just a single line, buried deep in the box score of the 1975 World 600: No. 8 10,000 RPM Speed Equipment Dodge, owned by Ed [img_r]http://i2.cdn.turner.com/nascar/2009/news/features/05/14/charlotte.moments.dearnhardt/earnhardt.100.jpg[/img_r]Negre. Started 33rd, finished 22nd, 355 laps completed, $2,425 won, running at finish.

For a driver who would go on to win 76 races and seven NASCAR championships during a 27-year career, 24-year-old Dale Earnhardt's Cup debut was decidedly unobtrusive. Based on that result, it's hard to imagine sitting in the stands that day and realizing where the future would take the kid from up the road in Kannapolis. But for Earnhardt in 1975, just getting the opportunity to reach NASCAR's top level was a victory in itself.

The story is well-documented of how Earnhardt funded his own racing program as a teenager, working at a welding shop and mounting tires, then heading to his own shop to work on his cars. He was married by 17 and had a son, which put even more strain on his financial situation.

His father, Ralph, was a top short-track racer, having won the NASCAR Sportsman championship in 1956. He landed Cotton Owens' No. 6 Pontiac for the 1961 World 600 and led 75 laps in the early going before fading to finish 11th. He crashed early in both the 1962 and 1963 World 600s, but did post an eighth-place run in the fall race in 1962. However, Ralph Earnhardt never parlayed that success into a full-time Cup ride, an achievement his son was bound and determined to accomplish.

But in those days, making a start in the World 600 might have been the furthest thing from Earnhardt's mind.

"It was tough," said Earnhardt, who by 1974 had remarried, with infant son Dale Jr. now in tow. "Money was tight, racing was hard. All the time, you had to keep going after it.

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"We lived in several different places. We rented a house trailer here and there and had an apartment here and there. Finally, we bought a trailer and set it up beside the shop behind my mother's house, where I kept the race car."

By then, Earnhardt had switched to pavement racing in an effort to jump-start his career. He also found himself struggling to make ends meet, which meant leaving his family for a job at the other end of the state.

"I wasn't working," Earnhardt said. "We weren't making any money so I had to take a job working all through Christmas in a paper mill in New Bern, N.C., The mill was going to be down all through the holidays and the boilermakers' union was going to make repairs on the bins and things that processed the pulpwood."

While Earnhardt was racing all over the Southeast in an attempt to make enough money to feed his family, his efforts caught the eye of Charlotte Motor Speedway president Richard Howard. Howard called up journeyman driver Ed Negre, who just happened to have a spare, year-old Dodge available, ironically affixed with No. 8, the numeral Ralph Earnhardt had used for much of his career.

As history records it, Dale Earnhardt qualified solidly and ran a steady, if unspectacular pace to finish 10 spots better than Negre and one position better than veteran Richard Childress, a name that would later figure significantly in Earnhardt's career. However, steady employment would remain an elusive target, as Earnhardt landed only a handful of starts the next three seasons.

"I drove a car for Johnny Ray at Atlanta in 1976 and tore it all to hell," Earnhardt said. "And later, I ran in some races for Will Cronkrite. But late in 1978, I was buying used parts from Rod Osterlund and DiGard and just about anyone else who would sell them to me. Some people began saying nice things about me to Roland Wlodyka, who was Osterlund's racing boss."

Osterlund took a chance on the brash, bushy-mustachioed Intimidator-to-be in the fall of 1978, sticking him in one of his cars for a 300-lap Late Model Sportsman race at Charlotte, which he very nearly won. Plans were then made to expand the team to a two-car operation for 1979, but when lead driver Dave Marcis decided to leave Osterlund Racing to start his own team, Osterlund gave Earnhardt the seat in the No. 2.

And the rest, they say, is history.

Earnhardt would go on to win rookie of the year honors that season, and score the first of his five Charlotte wins -- not including three All-Star victories -- the following year. Earnhardt captured the 600-miler on three occasions, the first coming in 1986, then winning back-to-back in 1992 and 1993. In total, Earnhardt had 16 top-five and 22 top-10 finishes in 48 career starts at his home track.