Free Republic

I was driving into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1983 when Derek Daly was being interviewed by Larry Henry on WIBC and uttered the now-infamous “n….. in a woodpile,” description of himself as he assessed the makeup of his Wysard racing team. Of course it was shocking to hear on the biggest radio station in town, but even though I’d only met Daly a couple weeks earlier, I also knew from his delivery that he had no concept of what he’d just said. I found him in Gasoline Alley and told him he could not use that word in any...

A sponsor announced on Friday that it has ended its partnership with NASCAR driver Conor Daly after it was reported that his father used racially insensitive language during an interview in the early 1980s. Lilly Diabetes pulled its sponsorship from Conor’s No. 6 car in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity race, citing his father’s alleged use of the N-word 35 years ago, reported Fox News. Derek Daly, a retired Indy 500 and Formula One driver, was fired days earlier from his role as WISH-TV’s Racing Analyst due to the controversy. In a statement, the elder Daly admitted to using the word, but...

NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Conor Daly lost his sponsorship deal with Lilly Diabetes for Saturday's Johnsonville 180 race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, because of a racial slur his father, Derek Daly, used during a radio interview in the 1980s that surfaced this week. According to ESPN, Daly's dad said he accidentally used a slur for African Americans because it had a different meaning in his native Ireland, and he hasn't used it since. "Unfortunately, the comments that surfaced this week by Derek Daly distract from this focus, so we have made the decision that Lilly Diabetes will...