Dale Jarrett Almost Didn’t Race.
Friday, March 21st, 2008Story and photos by: Drew Hierwarter
By any measure, NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Dale Jarrett has had a great career. He has 32 wins. That’s more wins than other greats like Fred Lorenzen, Joe Weatherly, Buddy Baker, or Harry Gant. He’s won the Daytona 500 three times. Only Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty have won the Great American Race more times. And he was the 1999 Series Champion. But all of that nearly didn’t happen.
Dale was born and raised in Hickory, North Carolina. His father, Ned Jarrett was a NASCAR star in his own right, amassing 50 wins and two championships in just 13 years on the circuit. One of the jobs Ned took on after retiring from driving was running the legendary Hickory Motor Speedway. So one would think, growing up in this environment, that Dale Jarrett would be predisposed to a racing career. The truth is that in school, Dale excelled in other sports like baseball and golf. In fact he was offered a full college scholarship to play golf. His career path almost led to the Masters instead of Daytona.
After several years of racing on his own in the NASCAR Busch Series, Dale made his Winston Cup debut at Martinsville in 1984. For the next couple of years he made infrequent appearances on the top circuit before landing a full time ride with champion driver turned car owner, Cale Yarborough. In 1990 he moved over to the famous Wood Brothers’ team and got his first win, the Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan. His first of three Daytona 500 wins came in 1993 driving for Joe Gibbs racing. Most long time fans remember this fondly as Dale’s dad Ned was calling the race for the nationwide television audience at the time.
In 1995 Robert Yates was looking for a temporary replacement for the injured Ernie Irvan and Dale Jarrett got the call. The team worked so well that once Irvan had recovered, instead of letting Jarrett go Yates created a second team and Jarrett would run the number 88 car for the next twelve seasons before joining the start up team of Michael Waltrip Racing in 2007.
Dale Jarrett drove in his final NASCAR points race last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway. After that he once again will follow his father’s career path and move up to the TV booth and add his expert analysis to future race broadcasts. There will be one more race however, the NASCAR All-Star race at Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte this coming May. Then he hangs up his helmet for good. He has done more in his chosen sport than most others who have tried it. He leaves the NASCAR garage without a single person willing or able to say anything negative about him. He has the respect and admiration of his peers as well as his legion of fans. And all of them can be thankful that when the time came for a decision, he decided to go racing instead of playing golf.