Cale Yarborough, NASCAR legend and Hall of Famer, dies at 84

Cale Yarborough, a NASCAR Hall of Famer widely regarded as one of the greatest drivers in the history of stock car racing, died Sunday morning following a long illness. He was 84.

Growing up on a tobacco farm in Timmonsville, S.C., Yarborough would become a talented athlete who earned all-state honors as a fullback at Timmonsville High School as well as two South Carolina golden gloves welterweight championships. Yarborough’s skills as a football player were enough that he earned a scholarship to play at Clemson for legendary coach Frank Howard. However, Yarborough chose a career as a racecar driver. He first attempted to qualify for the Southern 500 as a teenager by lying about his age, but he was found out and thrown out by NASCAR.

Yarborough’s career formally began with the 1957 Southern 500 and was sporadic over the next several years before he became a regular in NASCAR’s top division by the 1960s. His big break came when he landed with the Wood Brothers late in the decade, and launched to stardom by winning six races in 1968, including the Daytona 500, Firecracker 400, and Southern 500.

After focusing on USAC in the early 1970s, Yarborough returned to NASCAR for car owner Richard Howard, whose team was later bought by the legendary Junior Johnson. It was racing for Johnson that took Yarborough’s career to the next level: He was the first driver to win three straight Cup Series championships from 1976-78, an accomplishment which stood alone among NASCAR’s greats until it was surpassed by Jimmie Johnson.

A big, muscular man in a 5-foot-7 frame, Yarborough became a folk hero based off tales of his toughness or otherwise recklessness. In a 1978 story by Sports Illustrated, among the Yarborough tales told were stories of how he had wrestled alligators and bears, been struck by lightning, pulled snakes from murky waters with his bare hands, and landed an airplane without ever having flown one before. The most famous illustration of Yarborough’s willingness to get tough and rumble came at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500, when he got in a fistfight with Bobby Allison after he and Bobby’s brother Donnie had crashed racing each other for the win on the final lap — a spectacle captured in the first Daytona 500 broadcast live on CBS, and an incident that helped launch NASCAR from a regional curiosity to national relevance.

Yarborough remained a perennial championship contender until after the 1980 season, when he scaled back to a part-time schedule he followed for the rest of his career. But Yarborough was far from done contending for wins, particularly not in NASCAR’s greatest races: Driving for Ranier-Lundy, Yarborough won the Daytona 500 with last-lap passes in 1983 and 1984, and also added more wins in the Southern 500 and at Talladega Superspeedway as well as tracks like Atlanta, Pocono, and Michigan.

Yarborough finished his driving career in 1988 with 83 victories — a mark which now ties him for sixth on NASCAR’s all-time wins list — and a resume that includes four Daytona 500s (1968, 1977, 1983, 1984) and five Southern 500s (1968, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1982).

After stepping out of the driver’s seat, Yarborough continued his NASCAR career as a car owner over the next decade, fielding cars for drivers including Dale Jarrett, Dick Trickle, Derrike Cope, Jeremy Mayfield, John Andretti, and Greg Sacks among others. Of those drivers, Andretti scored Yarborough’s lone win as a car owner with his first Cup win in the 1997 Pepsi 400 at Daytona.

Yarborough was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998, an honor that carried over to NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers revealed in 2023. Yarborough was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012.

“Cale Yarborough was one of the toughest competitors NASCAR has ever seen. His combination of talent, grit, and determination separated Cale from his peers, both on the track and in the record book,” read a statement by NASCAR chairman Jim France. “He was respected and admired by competitors and fans alike and was as comfortable behind the wheel of a tractor as he was behind the wheel of a stock car.

“On behalf of the France family and NASCAR, I offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Cale Yarborough.”