Background and career
Darrell Lee Waltrip (born February 5, 1947) is an American motorsports analyst, author as well as a former national television broadcaster and stock car driver. He raced from 1972 to 2000 in the NASCAR Cup Series (known as the NASCAR Winston Cup Series during his time as a driver), most notably driving the No. 11 Chevrolet for Junior Johnson. Waltrip is a three-time Cup Series champion (1981, 1982, 1985). Widely regarded as one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history, Waltrip won 84 NASCAR Cup Series races throughout his career, including the 1989 Daytona 500, a record five in the Coca-Cola 600 (formerly the World 600, 1978, 1979, 1985, 1988, 1989), and a track and Cup Series record for any driver at Bristol Motor Speedway with twelve (seven consecutive from 1981 to 1984). He is fifth on NASCAR's all-time wins list in the Cup Series, one behind Bobby Allison. In the modern era of NASCAR, only Jeff Gordon won more races than Waltrip. He is ranked fifth for all-time pole positions with 59, including all-time modern era highs with 35 on short tracks and eight on road courses. Competing in 809 Cup starts over four decades and 29 years (1972–2000), he has scored 271 top-fives and 390 top-tens, and posted a modern NASCAR series record of 22 top five finishes in 1983 and 21 top five finishes both in 1981 and 1986. Winning nearly $19.9 million in posted earnings, he became the first NASCAR driver to be awarded over $10 million in career race winnings. Waltrip has additionally won thirteen NASCAR Busch Grand National Series races, seven American Speed Association (ASA) races, three IROC races, two Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) races, two NASCAR All-American Challenge Series events, two All Pro Racing Association races, and a USAC race. He competed in the 24 Hours of Daytona. He also holds the all-time track record 67 wins at the Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville, Tennessee, including NASCAR, USAC, ASA, and local Late Model Sportsman NASCAR sanctioned series races. He still holds many NASCAR records, more than two decades after his retirement as an active driver. Waltrip has also won many awards in NASCAR. That includes two for NASCAR's Most Popular Driver Award (1989, 1990), three for "American Driver of the Year" (1979, 1981, 1982), and "NASCAR's Driver of the Decade" for the 1980s, as well as three for "National Motorsports Press Association Driver of the Year" (1977, 1981, and 1982), two for "Auto Racing Digest Driver of the Year" (1981 and 1982), the first "Tennessee Professional Athlete of the Year" (1979), one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998, and the Bill France "Award of Excellence" in 2000. He has been inducted into numerous halls of fame, including the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America for 2003 the International Motorsports Hall of Fame for 2005. After being nominated for the inaugural 2010 and 2011 classes, he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame's 2012 class. Waltrip served as a color analyst for Fox Sports alongside Mike Joy, Larry McReynolds, and Jeff Gordon, a columnist at Foxsports.com, and an author. He is the older brother of former NASCAR driver and the now defunct MWR team owner Michael Waltrip. Waltrip retired from the commentary box at the conclusion of Fox's broadcast schedule for the 2019 NASCAR season in June 2019.
Waltrip was born on February 5, 1947, in Owensboro, Kentucky. Starting his driving career in Go-karts at the age of twelve, Waltrip entered his first stock car race just four years later. Waltrip and his father built a 1936 Chevrolet coupe and headed to a local dirt track near their Owensboro home. The first night out was far from a success as the youngster, barely old enough to drive on the street, slammed the wall and heavily damaged the coupe. Waltrip soon left the dirt and found his niche on asphalt where the smoothness he learned in the karts proved a valuable asset. Waltrip was a 1965 graduate of Daviess County High School in Owensboro. He was an early racer at the Kentucky Motor Speedway (an asphalt track in Whitesville) and Ellis Raceway, a dirt track on US Highway 60 west in Daviess County (Ellis Raceway is now closed), driving a car called "Big 100" built by Harry Pedley, owner of Pedley's Garage, on West Second Street, in Owensboro and sponsored by R.C. Bratcher Radiator and Welding Co. His success gained the attention of Nashville owner/driver P. B. Crowell, who urged Waltrip to move to the area to race at the Fairgrounds Speedway, at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in Nashville, where he would win two track championships, in 1970, and 1973. Waltrip drove the No. 48 P. B. Crowell owned Ford sponsored by American Home, in Nashville, where he aggressively promoted the week's race when he appeared on a local television program promoting the speedway's races, and was not afraid to embrace the local media when other competitors were reluctant to do so. Some of the notorious "on air" trash-talking included making fun of some of the other local drivers such as Coo Coo Marlin (whose son Sterling later raced at the circuit and is a two-time Daytona 500 winner) and James "Flookie" Buford, whose nickname he would mock on air. It pleased track management that he was helping sell tickets, leading to packed grandstands and extra paychecks from track operators for his promotional skills. He became friends with WSM radio host Ralph Emery in his early years, forming a bond which would be influential throughout his career, as Waltrip would appear frequently on Emery's early morning television show on local Nashville television station, WSMV, and later substitute for Emery in the 1980s on Emery's television show, Nashville Now on the former TNN cable network (now the Paramount Network). Waltrip would use the success he enjoyed at the Music City Motorplex, and his notoriety and public speaking skills that he acquired from television appearances in Nashville, as a springboard into NASCAR's big leagues. He became a Christian in 1983 but states it was years later before God came first in his life. One of the charities he supports is the Motor Racing Outreach (MRO) providing spiritual support to racers and their families.
Waltrip started in NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Winston Cup), NASCAR's top racing series at age 25, (25 years, three months, two days), on May 7, 1972, at the 1972 Winston 500, at Talladega, Alabama, the series' fastest and longest track at 2.66 miles, (4.281 kilometers), driving a 1969 Mercury Cyclone he purchased from Holman-Moody, originally the Ford Fairlane driven by Mario Andretti to victory in the 1967 Daytona 500. Waltrip finished 38th in his first Winston Cup race after retiring on lap 69 due to engine failure. Waltrip paid $12,500 for the car, a spare engine and some spare parts and drove it in five Cup Series events until mid-1973. The car was converted from the Ford Fairlane Andretti drove, to a 1969 Mercury Cyclone as driven by Waltrip, and later converted to a 1971 Mercury Cyclone. The car was sponsored by Terminal Transport of Owensboro, Kentucky, Waltrip's first major sponsor. Waltrip still owns the car today as part of a collection of cars he has raced and is one of his favorites. The early years found Waltrip competing against legendary stock car racers such as Richard Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, and Bobby Allison, among others. Waltrip soon earned the respect of his more experienced peers. He was given the No. 95 as a number but Waltrip preferred car No. 17 because his hero, David Pearson, had success with the number in earlier years. As an owner/driver, Waltrip ran five races in 1972, fourteen races in 1973, sixteen races in 1974, with seven top-five finishes, and seventeen races as an owner/driver in 1975, with his first Winston Cup victory coming at his home track, May 10, 1975, at age 28, (28 years, three months, five days), in the Music City 420, outpacing the field by two laps at the track where he had won 2 track championships in Nashville, Tennessee, in the No. 17 Terminal Transport Chevrolet, a car Waltrip owned. During the 1973 season, Waltrip drove in five Winston Cup races for Bud Moore Engineering.
Except for five races in 1973, driving for Bud Moore Engineering, Waltrip primarily drove his own cars from the beginning of his NASCAR career until the middle of the 1975 NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Winston Cup) season, when he was signed to a multi-year contract and replaced driver Donnie Allison to drive the No. 88 DiGard Chevrolet, Waltrip's long-awaited jump into the big leagues of United States stock car auto racing. The DiGard racing team was founded in part by Mike DiProspero and Bill Gardner, who were brothers-in-law, with the legendary Robert Yates as engine builder.
Waltrip's first race with DiGard came on August 17, 1975, at the Talladega 500, Talladega Superspeedway, in Talladega, Alabama, finishing 42nd after experiencing engine failure. Waltrip would compete in ten more races in the 1975 season for DiGard, sponsored by Terminal Transport, and get his second career Winston Cup victory October 12, 1975, in the Capital City 500, in Richmond, Virginia. He would post three top-five and four top-ten finishes in the eleven races he ran for DiGard in 1975. During the late 1970s, Waltrip would begin his domination of NASCAR's short track venues, especially at the Bristol International Speedway (Bristol, Tennessee), Martinsville Speedway (Martinsville, Virginia) and the Music City Motorplex (Nashville). He holds the track record at Bristol International Speedway, for wins with twelve victories, and for pole positions at Martinsville Speedway, with 8 pole position awards. In 1976, Gatorade became Waltrip's primary sponsor as he started his first full race season at age 29, driving the DiGard Gatorade Chevrolet. Waltrip won only one Winston Cup race in 1976, the Virginia 500, at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, but in 1977 and 1978, working with legendary NASCAR crew chief Buddy Parrott, he won six times each year, including his first of four career victories at the Talladega Superspeedway, in Talladega, AL, on May 1, 1977, and his first of a five career victories in the series' longest race, a grueling 600 mile race, the Coca-Cola 600 (formerly the World 600), May 28, 1978. Waltrip, and Parrott, would win 21 NASCAR races together from 1977 through 1980. In perhaps the most famous and most well known NASCAR race, the 1979 Daytona 500, held February 18, 1979, a race that Richard Petty won, Waltrip was a pre-race favorite to win the race. As the first NASCAR race covered "flag to flag" on national television, Cale Yarborough, and Donnie Allison, while battling for the lead on the last lap, came together and crashed hard, taking each other out in the third turn. While the Allison and Yarborough cars were spinning and coming to rest in the grassy infield, attention turned quickly to the new leaders, Richard Petty running third, and Waltrip, running closely behind in fourth, as a fist fight ensued between Yarborough, Donnie Allison, and his brother and racer, Bobby Allison, in the turn three grass. Earlier in the race, Waltrip's DiGard Gatorade Oldsmobile, dropped a cylinder and while able to hang onto the slipstream of the Petty car on the final lap, was not able to draft past the Petty car in the fourth turn on the final lap due to the reduction in horsepower. Still, Waltrip finished runner-up in perhaps the most famous race in NASCAR history, and was an early turning point in Waltrip's career. The 1979 Daytona 500 would be an early season precursor for the remaining nine months of the racing season. Waltrip and Petty would engage in a bitter battle, race after race, for the 1979 NASCAR championship. In that 1979 season, Waltrip won seven Winston Cup races and was a serious contender for what would have been his first championship despite numerous engine failures, mechanical problems, and differences with DiGard management. On September 23, 1979, after winning pole position and leading 184 laps at the Old Dominion 500, at Martinsville, Virginia, Waltrip again experienced engine failure. The DiGard team pitted the car and made a rare mid-race engine change in a record 11 minutes. Waltrip lost 29 laps in the pits but was able to finish 11th, as Petty finished 2nd. At the start of the final race of the season, the Los Angeles Times 500, at Ontario Motor Speedway, Ontario, California, Waltrip led Richard Petty by a scant two points in the year-long championship battle after finishing the race fifth ahead of Petty's sixth-place finish in the previous race, the Dixie 500, Atlanta Motor Speedway, November 4, 1979. However, Petty won an unprecedented seventh, and his final, NASCAR Cup Series championship by finishing the final race of the season in 5th position, as Waltrip finished eighth. The final margin of Petty's championship victory over Waltrip was only eleven points, the third-closest points race in NASCAR Cup Series history. Waltrip closed out the 1970s driving the No. 88 DiGard Chevrolet, sponsored by Gatorade, ranked NASCAR's No. 2 driver, having won 22 Winston Cup races in just 149 race starts. His aggressive driving style and outspoken demeanor earned him the nickname "Jaws", a reference to the 1975 film about a killer shark. The nickname was given to Waltrip by rival Cale Yarborough in an interview after Waltrip crashed Yarborough and D.K. Ulrich out of the 1977 Southern 500. Ulrich assumed that Yarborough had caused the wreck and questioned him after the race, to which Yarborough famously responded, "That Jaws ran into you." Waltrip himself preferred the nicknames "D.W." or "D-Dubya" but he acknowledged Yarborough by displaying an inflatable toy shark in his pit at the next race.
At the height of his NASCAR Cup Series success in the early 1980s, fans often booed Waltrip, in large part because of his success on the track defeating more established drivers with large fan followings, but also because of his open criticism of NASCAR, his admitting to condoning cheating, and his aggressive "take no prisoners", "win at all costs" approach to driving. Doing him no favors was his widely publicized falling-out with DiGard leadership, where he publicly admitted that he would not have won a championship as long as he drove for them. He attempted several times to be released from his driving contract with DiGard in 1980, a year in which Waltrip won five Winston Cup races. Still, Waltrip had a huge and devoted fan following. It was often said by race commentators and sports columnists that "you either hate him or love him". It was Waltrip's rival Cale Yarborough, driver for legendary owner Junior Johnson, that privately told Waltrip that he intended to cut back on his racing appearances and leave Junior Johnson & Associates team at the end of the 1980 season, opening the position for Waltrip, but only if Waltrip could successfully negotiate an early termination of his contract with DiGard. Waltrip successfully negotiated his exit from DiGard, and would take over the No. 11 for 1981.
