Fast Facts: Cale Yarborough

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Cale Yarborough had a number of firsts in his career: he was the first driver to win three consecutive Cup Series championships (1976 to 1978), the first NASCAR driver to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and the first driver to qualify for the Daytona 500 at a speed of over 200 mph. Here are some quick facts about this 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee.

• William Caleb Yarborough was born March 27th, 1939 near Timmonsville, South Carolina. He made his NASCAR debut in the 1957 Southern 500 at Darlington and raced periodically in the series throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, winning his first race in 1965 at Valdosta Speedway in Georgia.
• Yarborough drove for a number of NASCAR‘s biggest teams, including the Wood Brothers, Bud Moore Engineering and Junior Johnson; he also competed in four Indianapolis 500s (1966, 1967, 1971 and 1972), with a top finish of 10th in 1972. He won his three titles with Johnson, who had purchased Yarborough’s team during the 1974 season.
• Although Yarborough retired from driving in 1988, he stayed in the sport as an owner through the 1999 season. As a driver, Yarborough won 83 times and earned 319 top 10s in 560 races over 31 years. In addition to his three Cup Series titles, he won the International Race of Champions (IROC) in 1984, and won four Daytona 500s (1968, 1977, 1983 and 1984). He was named one of NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers in 1998 and is a member of the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, the Charlotte Motor Speedway Court of Legends and the Talladega Walk of Fame.
• Yarborough is well-remembered for his 1979 Daytona 500 fight with Bobby and Donnie Allison following a last-lap wreck. The race was the first NASCAR 500-mile race broadcast in its entirety on television.