Darrell Waltrip
Starting his driving career in go-karts at age 12, Darrell Waltrip entered his first stock car race just four short years later.
Waltrip and his father built a 1936 Chevrolet coupe and headed to a local dirt track near their Owensboro, Ky., 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 pavement where the smoothness he learned in the karts proved a valuable asset. His racing activities continued to increase and by the late 1960s Waltrip had become a regular at the fairgrounds track in Nashville, Tenn.
Waltrip quickly developed into one of the nation’s top short-track drivers and made his first NASCAR Winston Cup start in 1972 at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. He continued to make sporadic NASCAR starts while earning a living as a barnstorming short-track racer. Finally in 1975, Waltrip decided it was time to become a full-time NASCAR Winston Cup competitor.
He recalls: “Wherever I would go, I was almost assured I was going to win one or two races a week and I made a good living doing that. It was difficult to step to the big leagues and be just another fish in a big pond. So it took some time for me to make up my mind that I needed to get in there, give it 100 percent and make my mark.”
Included among Waltrip’s victories is the 1987 All-American 400 at the fairgrounds oval in Nashville, Tenn. The All-American 400 is recognized as one of the nation’s premier short-track races.
One of the enduring figures in NASCAR and a three-time champion (1981, 1982, 1985), Waltrip became the elder spokesman for the sport prior to his retirement “Victory Tour” in 2000. His 809 starts is third-best, his 84 victories ties him for third (with Bobby Allison) on the all-time list, and his 59 pole positions are fourth best in Cup history.
Waltrip won the (1989) Daytona 500 in his 17th attempt. He is the only five-time winner of the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway and won the inaugural The Winston in 1985.
He holds the modern-era record for wins from the pole position with eight in 1981. He was the first NASCAR driver to win $6 million, $7 million, $8 million, $9 million, and $10 million in prize money and was the third driver in NASCAR history to surpass the $15 million mark.
He was the winner of the NASCAR Most Popular Driver award in 1989 and 1990 and the National Motorsports Press Association Driver of the year in 1977, 1981, and 1982.
Waltrip continues to reap the respect he has cultivated as a motorsports broadcast analyst for FOX Sports. He was inducted into the Charlotte Motor Speedway Court of Legends and Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway’s Heroes of Bristol Hall of Fame in 1997.
