Modern fans reminisce about Jimmie Johnson’s domination of Lowe’s Motor Speedway in the early-to-mid-2000s, scooping up an historic three-straight wins in the Coca-Cola 600 from 2003 to 2005.
Johnson tacked on a fourth victory in NASCAR’s longest race in 2014, but he remains one behind the current record-holder: Darrell Waltrip.
The driver better known as “Jaws” for his ability to run his mouth, often cashed in the checks his mouth wrote, winning a stupendous 84 career races and 3 Cup titles in his illustrious career.
In his time at DiGard Motorsports, Junior Johnson & Associates, and Hendrick Motorsports, Waltrip compiled five victories in the World 600, a true feat of strength and stamina for drivers brave enough to complete all 400 laps in the humid Carolina heat at breakneck speeds.
Waltrip entered his first World 600 at 26 years sold, piloting his #95 KMart/Terminal Sport Mercury Cougar with the elusive and trailblazing Jake Elder helming the pit crew as crew chief.
Firing off from 13th place, the Owensboro native held a steady wheel and stayed out of trouble, finishing the evening in 7th, nine laps off race winner Buddy Baker.
The next year, DW returned to the famed 1.5-mile oval for another crack at one of NASCAR’s most prestigious events, qualifying a modest 18th in his self-owned #95 Chevelle. The Terminal Transit tactician weaved through the field through the day and came home five laps down in fourth place.
Elder and Waltrip competed together in the #95 for a third year in 1975, repeating their performance from the year before with a fourth-place result. The duo only ran under Waltrip’s banner for another six weeks when DiGard Racing gave Darrell an offer to drive their #88 Gatorade Chevrolet Laguna.
Their first attempt at the World 600 fizzled out in 11th, Waltrip’s first finish outside the top-10 in the event, but 1977 showed that the team and driver were capable of better things, winning six races and finishing fourth in the final point standings.
A leap in improvement didn’t produce immediate returns in that year’s running of the event, still failing to lead a lap and finishing sixth, four laps off the pace.
More energized than ever before, the Kentucky native notched victories at Bristol, North Wilkesboro, and Martinsville to kick off the year before heading into Charlotte.
Waltrip rose from 17th starting spot and grabbed the lead for the first time from pole sitter David Pearson on lap 43. The Gatorade car electrified the field for much of the race, streaking past Donnie Allison with 26 laps to go to claim his first win in NASCAR’s capital.
Years and years flew by, and by the time Darrell entered his seventh World 600 in 1979, he stood tall in the field with 17 wins over the past four seasons with two of those coming at Riverside and Darlington this season.
Entering the 600 second in the season points, Jaws knew he needed to feast again to put himself at the top of the heap, and there’s no place better to do that than NASCAR’s own backyard.
Waltrip joined Buddy Baker as the only drivers to win the Coca-Cola 600 back-to-back by eviscerating the competition, being first to the flag 175 times over 400 laps and leaving just Richard Petty and a rookie Dale Earnhardt as the lone drivers to accompany Darrell on the lead lap.
The win put Waltrip on a collision course with his first Winston Cup title, but it wasn’t meant to be when he lost the 1979 title at Ontario to Richard Petty by a mere 11 points.
Early in 1980, the series runner-up from the previous year spoke with longtime rival Cale Yarborough in private; the aging champion relayed that he would be moving to a partial schedule for his remaining years and informed Jaws that Junior Johnson wanted him to take Cale’s place.
Marked by wins at Riverside, Richmond, and Martinsville, Darrell kept his name in the title hunt with another hot start to a season, and Charlotte was shaping up to be a chance for the Franklin, TN driver to take the season into his own hands.
The 1973 champion Benny Parsons emerged as a major contender deep into the race as he locked onto Waltrip’s Gatorade Chevy as the race wound to a close. Parsons swiped the lead away from a routinely-dominant Waltrip with 26 laps to go, but DiGard’s most-stubborn driver was far from giving up.
With 11 laps left on the board, the #88 drove by Parsons’ #27 Chevy only for BP to slip by again on lap 392. Darrell gave the fans a show, sliding in front of Parsons with six to go, but it wouldn’t be enough.
The champ defeated the contender after a final pass with two laps to go, snagging another one of NASCAR”s crown jewel events just months removed his victory in the Daytona 500.
Waltrip lost out on a three-peat by just five car-lengths. Just like the 600, the ultimate success eluded the eight-year veteran when the 80s’ first NASCAR season ended with another disappointing points finish.
Thankfully, help was on the way in the form of Junior Johnson and an aluminum can of Mountain Dew.
During his last trip to one of his best tracks, Waltrip’s name was in the papers for all the wrong reasons. DiGard Motorsports team owner Bill Gardner sent invitations to several famous athletes, including Formula 1 champion Mario Andretti and Olympic gold medalist decathlete Caitlin Jenner, to replace Darrell for 1981.
In what can only be surprised as the best season of his career to-date, Jaws took a major bite out of the competition each and every week, claiming the trophy 12 times in 31 races.
One of those trophies did not come from a third World 600. Running a pedestrian 9th, DW was never a factor in his first chance at the biggest race with the series’ biggest team, but it failed to stop Darrell from achieving his biggest goal: winning the 1981 Winston Cup championship.
The next year saw more of the same: Waltrip clicking off a second Cup title in as many years on the back of 12 wins, though 1982’s edition of the fabled event produced his worst result to that point.
Fighting with his engine in the second half of the race, Waltrip fell off the pace with less than 50 to go, causing a caution and ending his day in 22nd. Not only was it his worst finish in the World 600, it was the second in a string of six races where Darrell placed outside the top-10.
After a brutal 36th place at Daytona in July, Waltrip only ranked worse than 7th in a race twice in the season’s final 14 events, taking an advantage in the standings with four races to go to add another Winston Cup to his already-storied NASCAR career.
New crew chief Jeff Hammond climbed aboard the #11 team as its engineering and strategic lead as the team switched to Pepsi for 1983, and the race that would become known as the Coca-Cola 600 disregarded Waltrip’s advances towards a third victory in the event, ending the race a solid fourth.
Like the 600 before it, the Winston Cup title withheld Darrell from earning three-in-a-row by the finest of margins, losing out to his archnemesis Bobby Allison by just 37 points after Johnson and the team floundered through the first eight races with four DNFs.
Not to be outdone, the Owensboro boy entered 1984 to re-establish himself as top shark in the murky waters of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, but wins collected at Bristol, Darlington, and Nashville didn’t give the newly-minted Budweiser crew any luck going into the 600-miler.
The two-time champ wrestled the lead away from pole sitter Harry Gant on lap 2 and led for 16 laps until Terry Labonte made the pass to move into P1. From there, the #11 Chevy Monte Carlo faltered, resulting in a 26th-place run marred with mechanical issues.
An undulating path through the 1984 season saw DW win seven races while carrying eight finishes outside the top-20, ultimately relegating him to 5th-place in the points.
Rising from his worst points finish with Junior Johnson, Waltrip looked to right the #11 ship for 1985, but heading into Memorial Day weekend, he couldn’t close the deal and put the Bud buggy into winner’s circle.
Two weeks before, Waltrip blew a piston and slid down to seventh in points, a low for the season, but not to be outdone, NASCAR introduced the first All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, one week before the 26th running of the World 600.
The exhibition event provided the ingenious Johnson with the opportunity to improve the car as much as possible, legally and illegally.
Whatever Junior did to the car, it sure was fast with Darrell looming behind the leaders after the first segment, waiting like a grizzled shark poking its dorsal fin into Harry Gant’s rearview mirror. Time continued to bleed away as the laps faded down to two, and that’s when Jaws struck.
Darrell executed the race flawlessly, even having his engine expire as he took the checkered flag to win the inaugural race and keeping the now-mangled composition under the #11 car’s hood a secret between his team and NASCAR.
Franklin’s fiercest fighter carried that swagger into the following week as he was scheduled for a bout with 41 other bruisers in a knock-down heavyweight brawl for the 1985 Coca-Cola World 600 title.
Bill Elliott entered the event with the chance to claim NASCAR’s first Winston Million after winning the Daytona 500 and the Winston 500 at Talladega in remarkable fashion, but his hopes were dashed when tire and brake troubles put him 21 laps off the pace in 18th.
The real story of the day was Waltrip. Starting fourth, the Budweiser Basher took the lead from Geoff Bodine early in the race before a drawn-out tussle between himself, Bodine, and Dale Earnhardt dominated the race’s middle stages.
Bodine dropped off, bringing Bobby Allison and Harry Gant into the skirmish for supremacy. The final caution on lap 327 put Gant’s Skoal Bandit #33 car into the lead, setting up a familiar duel from the previous week.
And, wouldn’t you know it, it played out practically the exact same way. DW lay in Gant’s wake for much of the final run to the finish until sneaking by Handsome Harry with 10 laps to go, holding off the challenge from behind to become the third driver in history to score three wins in NASCAR’s 600-miler.
Charlotte gave Jaws a ton of momentum heading into the rest of the season, adding wins at Richmond and North Wilkesboro in a string of races where the 14-year NASCAR veteran sank his teeth into Bill Elliott’s points lead with ruthless consistency.
Spectators witnessed a champion rise to the occasion, knocking off Elliott’s 11-win campaign to notch a third Winston Cup, tying him with Yarborough and Pearson in second behind Petty’s unconscionable seven.
Darrell’s 1986 season would kick off with a bang as he and new rival Earnhardt jostled for position around Richmond Fairgrounds over the last 20 laps before Earnhardt’s Wrangler Chevy clipped the right-rear of Waltrip’s Budweiser Chevy, sending both General Motors machines into the fence with the end in sight.
Getting into dustups with Earnhardt signaled a changing of the guard, a change Waltrip staved off the year before by closing out Elliott in the points battle.
Unfortunately, the youth was here, and they were plenty, putting additional stress on the aged and refined Kentuckian to perform as younger drivers began vying for more seats in NASCAR’s top division.
The World 600 highlighted the upcoming youth movement where the 39-year-old driver slotted behind Earnhardt and burgeoning talent Tim Richmond in the running order.
Earnhardt’s team Richard Childress Racing placed their car in victory lane with abundance, outranking Johnson’s Budweiser bunch with five wins and running away to his second championship with Waltrip gasping for air behind him, finally cementing the collapse with a DNF at the penultimate Riverside race.
Waltrip and Johnson’s championship chase divided the two as the year wore on since Johnson’s top driver sought a pay raise that other owners offered the three-time champion. Johnson balked at the idea.
Kicking the can further and further down the road, Waltrip met with the man that helped launch Waltrip’s Franklin-based Honda dealership years ago, Rick Hendrick, about joining the latter’s race team.
Darrell’s concerns with advertising for Budweiser muddied matters, but he firmly asked Johnson for a raise at the end of 1986. Considered a cardinal sin for Johnson, the two exchanged barbs, leading to Waltrip’s dismissal from the Budweiser beer wagon.
Hendrick wasted no time in placing Jaws in warmer waters, signing the driver of the 80s to pilot the #17 Tide Ride for the remainder of the decade.
The Tide Ride’s maiden voyage proved treacherous, especially in Darrell’s marquee May event. A 31st-place effort in qualifying required the former champion to work his way through the pack, but he could only muster a 5th-place finish as the evening faded into night.
After two more middling runs with new crew chief Waddell Wilson, Hendrick moved on from the Waltrip-Wilson partnership and paired the driver with the recently-released Jeff Hammond.
Now paired with his friend on top of the box from Johnson’s team, the Tide Ride received a boost to their chemistry for the rest of ’87, snatching their lone win at Martinsville in the fall.
Hot off the heels of Earnhardt equaling Waltrip’s three-title mark, many anticipated the 41-year-old racer would return to form in 1988 with a year under his belt with his newest team.
Hendrick’s Tide Ride rocked like the ocean in a rainstorm, matching top-5s and top-10s with finishes below 20th place, situating Team Tide 12th in the points prior to the season’s third crown jewel.
The Owensboro native’s fifth starting spot kept the #17 Chevy up front, taking the lead intermittently between pit stops before rolling into the lead on lap 370.
A late caution for his brother Michael threatened Darrell’s chance at history with 10 laps to go, but the multi-time winner flew ahead of Rusty Wallace and Alan Kulwicki to write his name alone at the top of the NASCAR mantle with a record-breaking fourth World 600 victory.
Inconsistency shrouded their season thereafter as the Tide Titans found trouble more often than wins. DW repeated their success at the fall Martinsville race but never found their footing in the points race, ending 1988 in seventh.
Describing DW’s 1989 season as anything short of a career comeback would be disrespectful to Rick Hendrick’s prized fighter. A fuel strategy race broke out in Daytona with the determined driver yanking his Tide Ride through Daytona’s high banks to secure his biggest career win in the Daytona 500.
He Ickey-shuffled his way past a dismal Rockingham run to win his second race of 1989 in Atlanta and followed that up with a third win at Martinsville in just the season’s eighth race.
Talladega represented a mild missed opportunity for Hammond and Waltrip, collecting a top-5 when a trophy would’ve bolstered their odds at the elusive Winston Million.
While the odds dipped slightly, Hendrick’s dynamic duo shined in the All-Star Race for 134 laps, winning the second segment before engaging in a fierce battle with Wallace in the 10-lap final segment.
Rusty wrestled with the wake from Waltrip’s #17 car until pushing his #27 Kodiak Pontiac through the wake and into the back bumper of Waltrip’s Chevy, spinning out the former champion coming to the white flag.
Though his car was undamaged, Hammond and the pit crew set off a fight with the Kodiak crew in the infield while Wallace headed to winner’s circle to celebrate a hard-fought triumph.
Fights in auto racing rarely end positively for the person on the receiving end of aggression, but Hammond and Waltrip cleaned themselves up from the spin cycle for next week’s big show.
Sending his car to the grid in fourth, Darrell did as he always had at Charlotte: he waited for the race to come to him and the car. Leading seven laps in the race’s first half inspires little confidence in a team’s ability to win a race, but when it was time to put the pedal down, Waltrip delivered.
Raucous fans watched the Tide Ride deter gentlemen from all over for the final 80 circuits, snaring a fifth victory in the sport’s longest race in just 12 years time and extending his record.
All of this while Wallace bowed out of the event with a busted engine with under 100 laps to go.
The win raised the #17 to the points lead once again, but Wallace was not going to be denied after narrowly losing out to Bill Elliott by a slight 24 points in 1988.
Bad runs at the newly-added Sonoma and Pocono dropped Waltrip below Earnhardt and Wallace where he’d spend the rest of the season punching up at the two younger drivers.
The 42-year-old Tennessean forged ahead with wins at Bristol and Martinsville, yet he missed out on the Winston Million after laboring his car home to a 22nd-place result in the Southern 500. DW settled for fourth as he failed to reign in the top-2 with Wallace winning his first title.
As the calendar turned to a new decade, Jaws’ luck began to sour.
Running on the last year of his four-year agreement with Hendrick, the aging star brightened up his team in 1990 by nabbing top-15s in all but one of the first nine races.
Gunning for a third-straight Coke 600 moved much of the attention for the weekend onto the #17 team. Waltrip seemed poised for a grand result until the green flag fell Sunday afternoon.
The venerable vet poked around in the midfield for much of the day as mechanical woes piled up, wearing the Tide Ride down to 22nd, seven laps behind winner Wallace.
Their turbulent campaign refused to give the Tide Team a break until everything broke at Daytona.
During practice for the 400-mile summer affair, Waltrip spun in oil left by an expiring motor before collecting Dave Marcis; the crash foiled the legend’s attempt at his 500th career Cup Series start.
Waltrip sustained a broken arm and broken leg to go with a concussion, putting one of the series’ cash cows out of commission for over a month before fully returning at Richmond in the fall.
He wouldn’t exactly rebound from the injury in 1990, and for the first time since 1974, DW went without a W. 15 victorious seasons vanished.
At the end of their contracts with Rick Hendrick, Darrell and Jeff Hammond bought out the assets from their #17 team from Hendrick and revived Darrell Waltrip Motorsports.
Driving for himself for the first time since the mid-70s, the 44-year-old looked to ride out the remainder of his career in his own equipment and building a future in the sport beyond the driver’s seat.
The newly-reformed squad put together a winning performance in just their seventh race at North Wilkesboro, avenging their baffling loss the year prior to Brett Bodine at the same circuit. Waltrip earned his 80th Cup Series victory that weekend, aligning him with greats like Allison, Yarborough, Pearson, and Petty.
Darrell’s 1991 Coke 600 was just quiet. He qualified 18th and logged an eighth-place result, which is great for a building team with just two intermediate races under the belt. Moving towards the summer, the team found success at the Tricky Triangle in June, winning his second race of the year at the Champion Spark Plug 500.
Another horrific crash at Daytona two races later injured the three-time champion again as contact from Junior Johnson’s newest driver Sterling Marlin pushed Alan Kulwicki into Waltrip on the backstretch, sending the #17 darting into the grassy infield with Joe Ruttman.
Practically hooked together, Waltrip’s Western Auto Chevy Lumina hit a patch of concrete and caught air, barrel-rolling before finally coming to a stop at the entry to turn 3.
Safety crews retrieved the battered driver from his car, and the diagnosis was much more positive than last year’s wreck with DW escaping with minor injuries.
The wreck set the team back for much of the season’s second half. A multitude of mechanical problems weighed on the team down the stretch, ending the year an impressive 8th in points.
The first 10 races of 1992 were challenging for Jaws and Hammond. Finishes worse than 24th in six races were capped off by a gut-wrenching 39th-place run in that year’s Coke 600 due to a blown piston before the 300-mile mark.
A bad run at one of Darrell’s best tracks spurred the team into action; from race 11 to race 22, Darrell rose from 23rd to 6th in the points on the back of three wins, the first coming at the July Pocono event that also marked Hammond’s last race on the box.
A second win at Bristol followed soon after, but the next race, the Mountain Dew Southern 500 would be where Waltrip and his first crew chief Jake Elder would reunite for a swan song performance.
Snagging the lead from his Hendrick replacement Ricky Rudd during a long green-flag run, Waltrip’s Western Auto wagon whipped around The Track Too Tough To Tame a few more times until the skies opened up, ending the race early under yellow.
Those nagging inconsistencies from the spring held the team back from entering the vaunted 1992 championship battle, even as the other contenders faltered. A poor showing in Atlanta slotted the DWM car at ninth in the final standings.
Despite new acquisitions on the technical side of the team, Waltrip’s success throughout 1993 became less pronounced than in previous years. Scoring 11th place at the World 600 a lap off the pace proved to be closer to the norm than contending for the win, leading just 151 laps all season and going winless.
Trying to regain his standing and reputation as one of the sport’s superstars, Waltrip swapped out 1993 addition Barry Dodson out at crew chief in favor of Clyde Booth for the remainder of 1994 where the two clawed their way back into the top-10 in points by racking up 8 top-10s in the final 12 races.
The ninth-place final points placement would be Darrell’s final entry into the top-10 in points.
1995 was truly the beginning of the end for Waltrip and DWM.
Darrell and new CC Pete Peterson kept their heads above water through the first nine events, but issues at Sonoma shunned them from the top-10 in points. With the 10th anniversary of his first All-Star win the next week, the elder Waltrip recognized the event as a big opportunity to get his race team back on track.
A powerful effort in the second segment put DW on the outside of the front next to none other than the Intimidator. Charging in his inverted Goodwrench Quicksilver Chevy, Earnhardt sought to take the point going down the backstretch.
Young hotshoe Jeff Gordon shifted his rainbow DuPont Chevy Monte Carlo underneath the #3 machine, offering up the chance for Waltrip to pounce heading into turn 3.
Jaws lunged into turn 3 on the top of the track while Earnhardt covered the challenge from Gordon. Earnhardt’s car entered the banked turn on the bottom and slowly inched towards the determined Waltrip.
The two cars collide on the exit of turn 4, Earnhardt sandwiching Waltrip’s #17 into the outside wall. The damage put an end to both of their nights, but that wasn’t the end of it for DW.
Saturday night’s crash left the aging legend with a trio of broken ribs and a deep inner-costal muscle tear that forced him into relief duty from the Coke 600 onward for several weeks. Three more top-10s were all the 48-year-old Owensboro auto racer could muster, ending the year a disappointing 19th.
DWM’s fabric unraveled at mach speed. DNFs in half of the first six races had the owner-driver hovering on the border of the top-30 in points. His best finish to-date would come at the most apt event on the calendar.
Rolling off the grid in 28th, DW moseyed through the field as the day faded into dusk, making his way up to an impressive 13th place, three laps off the pace of winner Dale Jarrett.
The season got a little better and a little worse from there, snaring two top-10s at Talladega and Phoenix, but the team’s reliability came under heavy scrutiny as the team bowed out of eight races due solely to mechanical reliability.
Much of the following season followed a similar pattern. Jeff Hammond re-entered the fold as crew chief, and a top-10 in the Daytona 500 lifted everyone’s spirits. Two more great runs at Martinsville and Sonoma put a the two in a great position to capitalize in the longest NASCAR race.
Positioning himself in eighth spot to start the race, Waltrip led his final lap in the World 600 in 1997, cycling to the front on lap 114 during pit stops before ducking into the pits himself, salvaging a 21st-place finish.
NASCAR’s grueling summer stretch punished DWM in the worst way possible, barring them from the top-20 for all but one of the season’s last 11 events. This was made worse by missing the fall Charlotte event because he simply wasn’t fast enough to make the show.
Fans today recall Mars (the company behind M&Ms) announcing their departure from Joe Gibbs Racing and driver Kyle Busch a year-and-a-half before their contract was due to expire. Interestingly enough, Parts America did the same thing with DWM in 1996, allowing the team time in 1997 to find sponsorship.
The NASCAR icon’s image faded from the usual top-10 and even now the top-20. A new sponsor in Speedblock should have kept DWM afloat for 1998, but the sponsor never paid the team.
Their final race as a team came at the 1998 Transouth Financial 400 where Darrell’s #17 Chevy Monte Carlo threw back to an ailing former champion, Tim Flock.
A call from an unlikely source revitalized Jaws’ declining career.
Dale Earnhardt established a Winston Cup race team with New Yorker Steve Park that debuted in 1998. A vicious crash in Atlanta for the season’s fourth race sidelined Park all the way until Indianapolis in late July, forcing the now-7-time champion to put Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday in the car.
Hornaday missed the show at Darlington, leading to an opening at the company for Waltrip to take the reigns while Park rehabilitated his injuries. Though the first month was rough, DW caromed around Fontana’s California Speedway for his first top-5 finish since Sonoma the previous year.
Darrell’s impressive run didn’t prevent Waltrip from using his champion’s provisional, lining up dead last for the longest race in stock-car racing. As he’d done countless times before at this same event, Darrell scraped and clawed for everything he had, landing a top-20 by crossing the line 17th.
NASCAR’s active wins leader rode a streak of five races where he finished inside the top-15 when Park returned to the grid, pushing Waltrip out. It would be revealed later on that Earnhardt attempted to keep DW at DEI for the remainder of the year, but sponsorship never materialized for a second entry.
This required Darrell to take a ride with Tim Beverly, the owner of Tyler Jet Motorsports. Beverly bought out Waltrip’s team after the Darlington race early in the year and fused it with the defunct ISM Racing.
Driving Beverly’s #35 Tabasco Chevy (and later Pontiac) proved arduous for the now 51-year-old, resigning at the season because of poor performance. The team never finished better than 13th at Indianapolis in the summer, which just so happened to be their first weekend together.
Choosing to keep his helmet on, Waltrip signed a two-year deal to rejoin sponsor KMart at Haas-Carter Motorsports (co-owned by Carl Haas, not associated with current Cup Series co-owner Gene Haas.)
The team swap failed to produce anything good of note for the fallen titan, failing to score a top-10 and missing a combined 12 races over his final two seasons driving the #66 Ford Taurus.
One of the races Waltrip was due to miss was his final attempt at the Coca-Cola World 600.
His 1999 appearance at the event was brief, surrendering after 32 laps with a blown engine and coming home 43rd, and even though the team did their best to field a better car for their retiring star, the team was outqualified by newcomer Carl Long and others.
Luckily for Waltrip, Long’s car owner Thee Dixon held a reasonable price and let Waltrip drive his #85 Ford even if the benefits weren’t exactly monetary.
The deal put the 84-time race winner and all-time 600 champion in the event for the 27th and final time, plugging around for 386 laps before ending the night under power in 36th.
Darrell’s last hurrah came at the hallowed grounds of Indianapolis Motor Speedway when he sat on outside pole for the event, eventually ending the day 11th, his best finish of the 2000 season. He fittingly led his final circuit on lap 48 of the Southern 500 at Darlington.
The season and a career came to an end in Atlanta, Darrell lining up shotgun on the field for his final salvo. There, he finished the NAPA 500 in 34th, seven laps behind winner Jerry Nadeau of Hendrick Motorsports.
When the checkered flag flew that day, Waltrip’s career concluded with a whooping 84 wins, still tied with Bobby Allison for fourth all-time. The Owensboro racer accumulated a record five World 600 victories and averaged a 13th-place average finish, easily the most dominant driver of his era when it mattered most.
In spite of his reputation for running his mouth, Jaws was one of the grittiest of them all and walked the talk, being king of NASCAR’s Memorial Day crown jewel.
(Top Photo Credit: ISC Archives)
