Yarborough fondly recalls early days of stellar career

Cale Yarborough's earliest success behind the wheel was gravity-assisted, but he quickly learned to handle cars with engines, and showed tremendous potential right from the beginning of his career.

The South Carolina native was always hard to beat, especially at his hometown track, Darlington Raceway. Like his three consecutive NASCAR championships, Yarborough's determination and desire was unmatched.

Driving for the likes of the Wood Brothers and Junior Johnson, he amassed 83 wins -- and was equally adept on Daytona's high-banks as he was at Bristol's bullring. Yarborough even competed full-time on the Indy-car circuit at one point during his career, showing amazing versatility.

Hall of Fame bio

As competitive as the sport has always been, NASCAR has had very few dynasties. Yarborough's reign in the late 1970s, though, was one of them. His string of three consecutive Cup Series championships from 1976-78 was unprecedented -- and unmatched until 2008, when Jimmie Johnson was crowned champion for the third consecutive year.

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Q: How did you get your start in racing?

Yarborough: I got started when I was 10 years old, in soap box derby. That was before go-karts, and I won a couple of soap box derby races. So I figured if I wanted to keep going in racing, I needed to find something with a little more horsepower.

I built my first race car when I was 15 years old, starting off at the dirt tracks. That was in Sumter, S.C., a little quarter-mile dirt track.

Q: How did you wind up in Grand National?

Yarborough: Well, I went through the short tracks. In 1957, when I was 17 years old, I was doing real well in short tracks. I had some friends and neighbors, and they said, 'Let's build a car and take it to Darlington.' So it was kind of a community effort, we put the car together and took it to Darlington.

I broke a spindle after about 30 laps and that put us out of the race, but I just kept going to the racetracks and finally started picking up some rides and the rest is history. I kept climbing the ladder.

Q: That wasn't your first visit to Darlington, correct?

Yarborough: Oh, yeah. I went to the second race they had there in 1951. I had to sneak in because I didn't have any money to get in. I made up my mind right then that I was going to be a racecar driver. It was awesome.

Q: How did your first full-time ride come about?

Yarborough: My first full-time ride came with Herman Beam. He gave me my first full-time ride. He had good cars and he got tired of driving himself, so he had been watching me and we got together and went from there.

Q: Didn't you end up with the Wood Brothers shortly thereafter?

Yarborough: I drove for them for five years. The first real good ride I had was a year-old car when I went to work for Holman and Moody. They put me in a year-old car and we ran the whole circuit with it.

The next year, they put me in Bobby Johns' car for Banjo Mathews. He wanted to go to Indianapolis, so they let me run his car while he was at Indianapolis, and then they put me in it permanently after that. That's Ford Motor Company I'm talking about. And then they put me in the Wood Brothers car after that. (Continued)