Just A Car Guy: There are 3 things Cale Yarborough never said: 1. I need a relief driver. 2. My car isn't comfortable. 3. I don't care who wins the pole position. He was the first to win 3 consecutive Cup titles

Monday, January 01, 2024

There are 3 things Cale Yarborough never said: 1. I need a relief driver. 2. My car isn't comfortable. 3. I don't care who wins the pole position. He was the first to win 3 consecutive Cup titles

William Caleb "Cale" Yarborough was born March 27, 1939, to a tobacco farmer, in the tiny community of Sardis, just on the outskirts of Timmonsville, South Carolina. The oldest of three boys, Yarborough was 10 years old when his father died in a plane crash.

A star athlete during high school, Yarborough went on to play semipro football for four seasons and was a Golden Gloves boxer for a period before turning to racing.

"I never had a relief driver during my 30 years of racing and that's one record I'm most proud of," says Yarborough, who retired as a driver following the 1988 season. No other driver with at least 500 starts on the Winston Cup tour can make that claim.

He won 83 of 558 races, an impressive 14.87 winning percentage. It's the fourth best percentage in NASCAR for anyone competing in more than 300 races. His 83 wins are fifth on the all-time list. He also won 70 poles, third on the all-time list.

While winning more than $5 million in prize money, Yarborough accomplished some other impressive statistics. He's the only driver to win the Grand National (now Winston Cup) championship three years in succession (1976-78), and the only champion (1977) to be running at the finish of every race.

4 wins at the Daytona 500 and 5 at the Southern 500 – and he is also one of only two drivers in NASCAR history to win three consecutive championships.

Now, years after he hung up his helmet for good, Yarborough is tied with Jimmie Johnson for the sixth-most wins by any driver in the NASCAR Cup Series with 83 victories to his name.

Of anyone leading at least 7,500 miles of race competition, Yarborough ranks second with 34,079.9 miles led and first in percentage at 16.0% He's less than 10,000 miles behind Richard Petty, who entered more than twice as many races as Yarborough. He's also second to Petty in leading the most laps (101) in a race.

In 340 races, he led at least one lap; only two drivers have led more races.