Cale Yarborough was not only one of the greatest stock car drivers to have lived but he was also an accomplished sportsman, gaining a scholarship in football and was a Golden Glove champion. He taught himself to fly in a Piper Cub aeroplane, learned to parachute and is reputed to have wrestled alligators, he’s an action man!

Cale Yarborough by Ted Van Pelt (Wiki Commons)

Born on 27th March 1939 in Timmonsville, South Carolina William Caleb Yarborough was the eldest of three sons to Julian and Annie Mae Yarborough. His father encouraged his sons by telling them that they were able to do anything if they put their minds to it. Julian would take his sons to the stock car races at Florence and Sumter and this was the beginning of Cale’s love of racing. At the age of eleven Cale went to the fairly new speed palace near Darlington, bunked in under the fence to watch the second Southern 500 and was able to watch the likes of Lee Petty and Fireball Roberts in action - an enviable opportunity for him. In high school Cale played semi professional football and was a boxing champion, he also worked as a crew member for Bobby Weatherly and his Palmetto Racing team and when Bobby discovered that Cale could drive he encouraged him to get behind the wheel to take a few practice laps. Before long Cale was building his own car, a 1935 Ford which he drove at the quarter-mile track at Sumter, finishing third in his first heat race. Together he and Bobby Weatherly built a car to enter the 1957 Southern 500 with the intention of Cale driving it. When NASCAR discovered that he was only seventeen they asked for his credentials back but for Cale not to be disappointed Bobby entered the car as the driver, sneaking Cale into the car instead of him before the race. Cale qualified 42nd and managed a few laps before being disqualified by the officials. Cale ran his debut race in 1958, driving the #Pontiac for Bob Weatherly where he started at 44th position and finished at 42nd and this was the beginning of what turned out to be a brilliant career. He had 83 wins in thirty one years; this placed him at fifth in the all time NASCAR winners list. He was the first, (the second being Jimmie Johnson who went on to win his fourth consecutive championship in 2009) to win three consecutive Winston Cup Championships, 1976, 1977 and 1978. He won the Daytona 500 race four times and in 1984 he was the first driver to qualify for the Daytona 500 whilst driving at a top speed of more than 200 mph. His other awards are also impressive being:- NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver Award (1967), three times National Motorsports Press Association Driver of the Year (1977, 1978, 1979), IROC V111 champion ((1984), International Motorsports Hall of Fame Inductee (1993), National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame Inductee and Motorsports Hall of Fame of America Inductee (1994), Court of Legends Inductee at Charlotte Motor Speedway (1996), Talladega Walk of Fame Inductee (1996), Named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers (1998). He is the only Cup driver with over five hundred starts to finish all of his races himself without a relief. He said of this, "I never had a relief driver during my thirty years of racing and that’s one record I’m most proud of".

Cale ran his last season in 1988 in an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and retired at the end of the year to spend more time with his wife, Betty Jo Thigpen who he married in 1961 and his three daughters, Julie, Kelley and B.J.

During his working life he has been not only a race car driver but has had a logging company, a turkey farm and has owned Cale Yarborough Honda in Florence, South Carolina for the past twenty five years.

Cale was not only famous for his record three consecutive championships but also for an important incident of NASCAR history. In 1979 during the Daytona 500 Cale went beneath Donnie Allison in the final lap, resulting in them both wrecking out. A fight ensued between Cale, Donnie and his brother Bobby Allison that was televised and viewed by millions, this, some say, ingrained NASCAR into the National consciousness and started the sport into a permanent American sports fixture in both south and in north America because before this incident sock car racing was primarily a southern sport.

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Cale Yarborough - Wikipedia
NASCAR Website
William Caleb "Cale" Yarborough
Cale Yarborough - Examiner.com

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