Cale Yarborough, a brave driver who always took on challenges that produced three NASCAR Cup Series championships, has died. He was 84 years old.
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.
Yarborough scored his first Daytona 500 win in 1968, edging Lee Roy Yarbrough by 50 feet. Months later, he added a victory in the Southern 500 at Darlington that he still held in high regard after his retirement.
His three Cup Series titles came consecutively from 1976-78.
“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.
Yarborough caught the eye of Darlington track president and general manager Bob Colvin at a soap-box derby race.
He encouraged the young driver to make his Cup Series debut there in the 1957 Southern 500 as a teenager. He finished 42nd in the 50-car field, but not before drawing the ire of NASCAR officials for not meeting the era’s minimum age requirement of 20 years old.
