CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb. 22 — Once, back when Dale Earnhardt was banging fenders on short tracks, back when his sideburns were a little too long and his temper too short, his friends and family could have gathered in one of the little white wood churches so common here to say goodbye to him. But today, after so many victories, so much fame, it took a cathedral to hold all the people who wanted to say how much they will miss Earnhardt, the man stock car racing fans call the Intimidator.

Some 3,000 friends, family, stock car racing officials and corporate sponsors gathered in Calvary Church, a 6,000-seat cathedral, for a memorial service for one of history's most successful, respected and popular race car drivers.

Agence France-Presse Todd Barlow, of Summerville, S.C., watching from the lawn of Calvary Church on Thursday, where a memorial service was held for Dale Earnhardt.

The invitation-only crowd heard two presiding ministers tell them to lean on their faith in the aftermath of Earnhardt's fatal crash Sunday in the Daytona 500 on the final lap. They told his friends and family to share their stories of him, to keep him close and to help them heal.

But the people who loved Earnhardt, 49, who loved to watch him race and take chances that sent chills down their spine, would have done that anyway. There is no danger, said people who follow stock car racing, of that world running out of stories about Dale Earnhardt.

After the 25-minute ceremony, which was attended by some of Earnhardt's competitors, including Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Sterling Marlin, people who had followed his career stood in the church lobby and pondered just what it was that made Earnhardt so successful and endeared him so much to race fans.

After a while, most people summed it up in one word: guts.

Jim Freeman, executive director of the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala., recalled something that Bud Moore, a legendary car owner, once said about Earnhardt. Most drivers, Moore had told Freeman, would stick the nose of their car in harm's way, but after enough sheet-metal-tearing crashes, they would learn not to do that, or else they lost their stomach for it.

According to Moore, Earnhardt never got bashful. "Earnhardt would stick it in there over and over again," Freeman said.

Fans loved Earnhardt's bad guy with a heart of gold persona. But more than anything they just loved to see him race.

"He was maybe the last of the real legends," Freeman said.

That, he said, is why people cannot seem to stop talking about Earnhardt, why they keep trickling into unofficial memorials in North Carolina, at Daytona, at superspeedways in Talladega and Atlanta and at short tracks all across the country.

The massive cathedral was not home to Earnhardt's funeral. That happened on Wednesday, in his home church in Kannapolis, N.C., where a tighter group of family and friends gathered. Today's service, larger in scope, was dignified and respectful. Two ministers prayed for his family and reminded them that God could help them in this time of heartbreak.

Accident Photos [large]

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