Cale Yarborough, a tenacious driver whose hard-charging style produced three NASCAR Cup Series championships, has died. He was 84.
Yarborough was a four-time Daytona 500 winner and a five-time victor in the Southern 500 – figures that rank second all-time for each crown-jewel event. His three Cup Series titles came consecutively from 1976-78; only Jimmie Johnson, who won five straight crowns from 2006-10, has claimed more titles in a row. Yarborough and Johnson are tied for sixth on the Cup Series’ all-time list with 83 victories each.
The rest of Yarborough’s life story veered between stock-car accomplishment and surreal folklore – with varying degrees of truth behind it – that underscored his toughness. Townsfolk in the South Carolina community of Sardis, where he settled, told the tales of how Yarborough survived a lightning strike, once flew and landed an airplane with no training and plucked water moccasins and wrestled an alligator in the Palmetto State swamps.
Yarborough is forever linked with the historic Darlington Raceway, the hard-edged track one county over where he made his big-league debut. Darlington honored Yarborough in 2016 by dedicating the same garage that he snuck into as a youth in his name. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012 as part of the stock-car shrine’s third class of honorees.
“Cale Yarborough was one of the toughest competitors NASCAR has ever seen,” NASCAR Chairman & CEO Jim France. “His combination of talent, grit and determination separated Cale from his peers, both on the track and in the record book. 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.”
William Caleb Yarborough was born March 27, 1939, as the oldest of Julian and Annie Yarborough’s three boys in Florence County, South Carolina. The family farmed tobacco and cotton, and Yarborough was driving a tractor to help with plowing by age 9.
When his father was killed in a private airplane crash when Yarborough was 11, the youngster grew quickly into a more prominent role managing the family’s land and business affairs. The experience served him well in later years as a farmer, a businessman and a multiple-term member of the Florence County council, but he had designs on a faster-paced career.
