NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Darrell Waltrip on The Garage Shop Insider

somebody said boy you talk about yourself a lot well i was afraid you weren't going to [Laughter] [Music] hello everybody welcome to another great edition of the garage shop insider i'm tim packman today we're talking to a legend a hall of famer a unique character in the sport of nascar and racing in general the one and only mr daryl waltrip here present darryl there was a history in nascar before you started racing mm-hmm not much but you then you made history yeah the things that you did three championships and all your 84 wins and everything and memorable moments yeah and now there's a history that's taking place now yeah how important is it for everybody in general to remember that history and and keep that alive yeah i i i guess for me i always i thought that's what the hall of fame was all about was to create some of those memories from the past some of the pioneers some of the guys that we stood on their backs and you know i stood on buddy buck baker and joe weatherly and fireball roberts and i stood on their back and went to another level and then people jimmy johnson and jeff gordon and those guys they they stood on our backs and took the sport to another level and now there's kids that are standing on their backs taking this on and so it evolves you know you can't uh you got to know your history you got to know the history of the sport and and quite honestly i think i was in the golden age i think the drivers that were in my era are the drivers that they had personality they they had stories they drove for so many different driver owners and so and so it's just i think it was at a different time and i realized that i know you can't stand still you got to keep always moving forward but i'm i'm i'm very happy and very thrilled to have been in the in the 70s 80s and early 90s that was my time and uh i capitalized on that and i'm i'm happy about it so when you were coming up to the ranks i mean you started in 1972 who was who are you looking at in the 60s and 50s and who are the guys that you were looking up to when you weren't anybody i you know i started racing at the fairgrounds in nashville well actually way back i started in owensboro kentucky and uh and it's funny how it goes because eventually i won every race that every time i'd race in bar i win and so i i had to go and and i want to be a race car driver i want i'd lay in in bed on my little transistor radio and listen to the daytona 500 and and sometimes i could get it and sometimes i couldn't it just depend on it turn it got it turned just right or the crow hanger was just right so but i didn't know a lot of people i was i thought when i started my driving career i'd be in indy i mean i lived in owensboro kentucky which is right on the ohio river right across from evansville indiana and you know indianapolis not that far away and a.j floyd and mario and roger ward and and john and those were kind of guys that i was more familiar with i hadn't really paid a whole lot of attention to stock cars and i'll tell you what changed my mind so i'm driving it at the weissville and they bring a sprint car over actually i was at the ellis speedway they bring a sprint car over because hopstot indiana tri-state speedway is just across the river so they brought a sprint car over for just for a little exhibition run well the driver didn't show up and so the guy comes he says they say you know this strike better than anybody would you take our car out and run it a few laps i said hell yeah you know it's what i it's what i live for have you ever been in a sprint car never been in one in my life perfect so i'll hop in that thing man and push me off and i mean i know the tracks hey man i'm throwing dirt up in the ground i'm having a ball and i'm loving it and i come in i parked the car and the guy says hey what are you doing next saturday night got yourself a job so i went to trial state speedway to hobstown indiana and uh and and that was a rude awakening because the first night i drive the car i go out in a hot lap and and i mean it's like this is a little bitty race not quite as big as as elvis speedway was so it's a little tricky i could throw that thing in there and you got to gas and you got to go so i coming in and and the guy was explaining to me now when you come in you kick it out of gear and you rev the motor a little bit to clear the injectors out i said okay no problem so i'm going to come back in i'm coming down the pedal and kick it out of gear now i mean these things would rev up like like out of sight and it just i mean i barely touched the throttle i blew the motor in his car i mean coming in the pits so he wasn't happy about that but i said look i don't know i said i don't know what happened but i think the motor blew up so anyway so i go back to next week and this is my second week i know the track i'm getting a little more comfortable and in the heat race i left the ballpark i hung wheels with somebody and i went out of the ballpark turned upside down and i was laying out there in the field somewhere in a sprint car wonder didn't kill me and i knew right then i said well that's the end of my that's in my open wheel driving career ended right there i like roose i like roll bars i like to be confined i like that a little bit better so i never drove another open wheel before after that two times two times that's all perfect blew the motor wreck i went home so when you did start racing there was history ahead of you and so when you got on the track there was veterans yeah and then here comes daryl walter from owensboro kentucky yeah and you're looking up at these guys going okay i have two choices i can either go out and race them let them intimidate intimidate me yeah or i can make my own name well but here's here's the deal so i buy this i buy this mercury from home and moody and uh and then it had been raced at talladega and so the and it was a 69 mercury when i bought it and i wrecked it and so we made it into a 71 mercury like the wood brothers car and so people always say why was your first race talladega well that's when we got the car done that was the next race when we got to carta and so jake elder is my crew chief i don't even know what a crew chief does but he's my crew chief and hudson pagan had built the car and and it had a 429 motor in it and so we go to and i had a 427 tunnel point like at the time so we go to daytona or to talladega well i don't know if you remember but in 1972 that's when it had the tire to bolt i mean goodyear had developed they came with the slicks to start with so then they come back to talladega with a treaded tire well this tire i mean won't last 10 laps it flies all the pieces when i bought my car it came with 16 slicks like they had raced there before so that's all the tires i had and jake elder was my crew chief and he was livid we've got we'll never be competitive you've got to buy i said i ain't got no money to buy tires we're going to run these tires that's all we got but that turned out to be the hot tip so i ended up leading that race me and james hilton had a hell of a battle he led i led he had a fast car out he had old tires i had old tires and i eventually blew the motor something happened to the motor and i fell out of the race i made more money selling my tires than i did if i'd have probably won that race i think i made 2500 3000 selling that used tires i had because that's what everybody wanted at the time so that was my in that was my introduction into the sport and i always thought i wonder what had happened if i'd have won that race holy cow what would i i i wonder they think i was they called me jaws i don't know what they would have called me if i'd have won that race that'd been my first time out my first time at the track i'll win the race this is a piece of cake i should have been doing this all along but anyway i didn't and i struggled a little bit from there on but uh those early years i knew richard petty i knew he was the king i knew david pearson he was my hero david david pearson and bobby isaac were two of my buddies when i had a problem or if i needed a if i had a question i'd go to pearson and he'd always help me out i became great friend with the wood brothers leonard and glenn were my really good friends of stevie and ice and uh and of course bobby allison was my friend because bobby had built our cars to run at the fairgrounds so it wasn't like i didn't know anybody but i didn't know him that well and i was just some kid from tennessee and they all thought i had a lot of money because my father-in-law frank greater he was the president of texas gas texas gas in owensboro so they assumed because i married stevie and he was the president of texas gas we had unlimited funds well we we wouldn't i would pay my guys on friday and borrow it back from on monday because they had the money to operate that week so we struggled we really struggled a lot in the beginning but uh i think it was all for good you know i think it i think the lord had me in that position struggled had some success and and the way my career ended is not the way i would when anybody's career and i think richard ended that way a lot of us guys that were had our era but you know it didn't end well but uh i was having fun while it lasted um so when i look at the history and you're talking about you know some of the names you brought up to bobby isaacs and that so the garage shop you know what aaron and brown and all the guys have been doing they're preserving you know they you're a lot of your cars are there yeah um amazing collection you have there yeah everything from the mod number 88 gatorade modified right one at daytona to you know your western auto silver uh what are the foil car you go phone call chrome car that's it do not call it sir chrome sorry chrome chrome car uh what they're doing with now with the bobby isaac car and the ford tail today yeah how do how important you think that is that people now in 2021 know that what took place back there yeah well i i think most people think racing started in 1992. i don't think they know there's a history behind what happened you know why 92 because that's when gordon started and he introduced us to a whole new market you know home and a bunch of young kids and but yeah i think that people would look at that wing car and they'd say you mean they raced those you mean actually those things were on the track or that talladega that that the ford talladega they actually raced those but i i think aerodynamics is is dominates the sport today i mean you do things your cars that chassis-wise that we would never consider doing back in the day because we worked on the chassis and the body was just a body now they work on the body and the chassis just the chassis so i i think when people see those cars from the past and and i never forget i think it was chris busher went down to the hall of fame my car was on glory road and he went up and he looked in he said i wouldn't get in it he said that thing ain't safe and i had a little skinny seat belts and a banjo seed and you know no head rest no anything you just you said that thing and we sat on our cars they said in their cars you know we sit up on top the car and drove it they sit down in them like they're like an airplane or something so totally different time again you evolve things get better your safety you know learn heart gets killed and then we go to a whole new safety innovative and innovations and so things happen that create new things that have to happen but the cars that we drove i always tell people and i'm and i don't mean this in a bad way the cars i drove would kill you the cars they drive the nail only hurt you i mean you can hit the wall you got safer barriers they got the big seats they got the head rest uh you know they're pretty protected we weren't protected from anything we were we needed to be protected that's why we had nascar to when we would do things that probably no one else would do nascar was there to say oh you can't do that so uh it just evolves i think that's the whole thing so the garage shop because the reaction that we have have received from just posting of pictures of the dodge daytona yeah and bobby isaac's number 71 yeah and now the fort talladega comes along it's it's been amazing people that you know from you know you're in my era yeah and now younger ones like what's that what's going on so with the work they're doing and it's pure passion you know that you know we're and the work they're doing out of there has just been incredible to be done in 2021 yeah it is well there's not a lot of aaron brown's around that can that will live through the hit some of the history that he's lived to working at dei and for ray and other places you know i mean he's learned a lot and he's like he's like i am uh you know we we we have a whole lot more fun thinking about things that we have done than what we're gonna do uh and i think those cars are just a product of the of the past and i look at the cars and they're fascinating because you wonder who ever thought about putting that big wing up on the back of a car or the way that nose was sloped down but i also think about the guys that drove them and the buddy bakers and and the people like that that were really uh i don't i i guess we felt like it was we was a we were as safe as we could possibly be at that time but then when you look at the way cars are today and the way the cars went back in the engine so you had to be an idiot to drive that thing and uh because it just they we didn't have the safety innovations that they have today so i love aaron i love the job he does he and his people they're all historians they love the sport they know the cars they know how to build the cars they built cars similar to that so i love what he's trying to do and i love preserving the sport and the history of it so the air awards that was that ended just before you got started yeah so you had to hear a lot about it you had to see some of it too even if you're listening on your transistor radio there but it was still a part of it that you just you came in like right after that that ended yeah well i mean junior johnson discovered the draft for instance i think what that was 63 or 4 whatever it was and so what the hell is a draft you know what does that mean well until you actually are out on a car and you actually sniff up behind the car in front of you like you picked up 100 horsepower then you know what the draft is and then then it becomes a matter of a chess game how do i use it i know what it is i know what it does but what i do with it and i think dale erner senior was probably he was one of the first guys that figured out how to side raft you know we just drive up behind somebody and that was drafting he drove up behind you get up saying put his damn bumper in your door you know and slow you down and speed him up and he caught i never forget i went to him i said what the what are you trying to wreck us all he said what are you talking about i said you almost drove into my door he said have you ever heard of side drafting i said no i hadn't not until now anyway but anyway you know i was side drafting and all of a sudden that became like a standard everybody's side dress run up guy pulling and slowing him down and go on so it just things we learned i mean we a driver would get killed but joe whether they would get killed and maybe didn't have the right seat belts or maybe he didn't have the right seat or whatever and nascar would in there and and it's one of the things they're really good at they would evaluate what happened and try to figure out how to keep it from happening again and and so they spent a lot you know fuel cells and inner liners and just so many things that are taken for granted today that had to be developed and somebody had to do the research and somebody had to do the r d and somebody had to tested and so a lot of guys back in the day were more like test pilots and they weren't race car drivers but some of them survived and uh and are able to talk about it and some of them we talk talk about them and what their contribution was so speaking of the draft i know you got my interest do you remember the first time you experienced it because you you said your first race was tailored you know i didn't know what it was you know but so you're in the car and i'll say you're like oh i'm close to this guy i just thought i had a fast car you know you mean but it's funny how you you learn things i mean that's that was really you know as a driver whether it was at whitesfield nashville or talladega you'd go out and you would experience something and you come back in you say what the hell was that hmm how'd that happen and so not always in now i was have terminology for it we just knew what it did and then okay so now i see how that works so now what do i do where do i go from here and it's always one step at a time so i think arrow wars were that way i mean you know one guy gets his front end sloop down the other guy gets his roof tucked in and the fenders throw you know and they make the cars smaller and smoky umic was a great example of that so aerodynamics was huge and they helped the car a lot but nothing overcame that chassis i mean back in our day whether jay killed or herb nab bud morgen whoever it was it wasn't about how nice a body you had it's what springs you got in that car what shocks you got in that car what sway bar you got in that car that's what made the difference and i was the on-board computer you were the engineer i was the guy that came in i'd say here's what we're going to do they don't do that anymore the guy comes in now they don't even go and talk to him they look at the computer and here's what we're going to do i i can't tell you how many drivers they've told me say look crew chief come here and say look we've downloaded this car we've chassis downloaded it we've had on the shaker machine this car is perfect don't screw it up and send him out and and how many braces have you been to watched normally the first lap that car runs around that racetrack is about one of the fastest apps that will run all day so they do have they do have they have an optimum setup in the car to go fast and i think we're a driver some drivers are more important and some drivers can do a better job than others is what do i need for the race because you can only you can make a car go fast for a lap or two but i got to run this thing 500 miles and so what do i need in this car to make it drivable for 500 miles that's where that's where the good drivers excel um so you talk about manufacturers different cars different looks so you talk about how things have evolved through the evolution evolution they kind of look pretty much the same right now except for maybe some front ends and some stickers but it's tough to like look real quick and go that's ford that the dodge that's a chevrolet a buick you know some of the makes we've had i think i go more by the driver yeah than i do the car i mean i know there's toyotas and they've been good to me and my brother uh and i made all the race i went on one in chevrolet's we've had fords and dodges but when you line them all up side by side other than different decals on the nose to give them a little bit different appearance uh from the nose back uh they're pretty much all the same and and so i think parity is is the worst thing that ever happened to any sport whether it's football baseball basketball or racing we didn't we we didn't live in that world we lived in the interpretation world here's the rule how do you interpret it here's the rule how do i interpret it and so i i think parody you know who parody only person that parody is good for the inspector okay because that was kind of the way it was going well everybody's got the same but yours and yours is different and so you need to get yours like everybody else's i can't tell you how many times they come and say look i don't know what you're doing i know you're doing something but don't bring it back so there's plenty of gray area i got that for days but anyway uh i hate parody i think it's i think it's i think if you look at the racing today and they haven't they've they put a kind of lock the teams down to the cars they have because of the new car that's going to come next year i think that's parity because you can't develop any new parts you've refined the car to absolute perfection uh and so it really comes down to the crew chief and the decision he makes and how the driver drives the car so um but when it was kind of a a mixed bag of the rules and interpretation or interp interpreting the rules and he did this and he did that and somebody else did that uh that was when it was fun and you know why it was fun because it was challenging it was challenging to go the track with something a little questionable you know and see if they could find it or not and if they didn't guess what you probably won the race that week you probably won the race that way and maybe the next week you know the best inspectors in the garage were the other drivers the other crews that's why you see you know you keep everything covered up and you'd you don't want anybody around your car because maybe you had a trick or spit you know maybe your spindles or maybe your maybe have a three-quarter inch snout enough half inch so you know you never knew everybody had something a little bit different and if somebody was kicking your butt you want to know what it was how are they doing that what are they doing we're not doing so i hate parody though so i'm going back uh you brought up bobby isaac yeah that car's iconic i mean if you think of a dodge daytona that one for some reason always seems to leap into people's minds yeah uh what are your memories of bobby oh he was he and david he and pearson really were true they were the first two guys that ever really kind of embraced me because i had always been a big fish in a in a little pond all right nashville i wouldn't i want all the race in nashville i went where i want to want i go to cup i'm just another fish in a big pond and so it was it was hard buddy baker was pretty nice to me most the time uh bobby allison was my best friend when we started uh and then david pearson and isaac they would they would embrace me they would help me they would tell me here's what you're doing wrong here's what you need to be doing and i i never forget so i go out we're at daytona and we're running and i run up behind somebody nominate who it was i don't know maybe it was maybe it's richard petty and i got right up on their back bumper and they started shaking their fist at me and i said what the hell so i'll back off i think maybe he's got a problem maybe something wrong so anyway i come into pits and i go over and i asked i was piercing i said hey david i was behind richard and he i wasn't doing anything wrong i didn't think i said i said and he started shaking his fist at me he said next time he hit him in the ass he said he said he'll put that hand back on the wheel he won't be shaking at this no more don't need both hands to hang on to that baby okay good idea so but that was the way pearson was great i mean he was just down to earth he loved racing he loved to drive cars and he wouldn't always give me you know it wasn't eloquent necessarily the explanations but it he had a racing mentality like no one else i i think pearson in my opinion was the greatest driver we've ever had so i think we're talking about history if he'd run full-time every season like could you imagine i i mean i know i worked with jake elder a lot and jake was his crew chief different people i i raced with pearson a lot when he was with the wood brothers uh he just had a he just had a knack about him he just knew he knew what it took to be successful and uh he didn't brag about it he didn't talk about it i can't tell you how many times i'd see that 21 car and i'm just about ready to lap him and the car can come out and i'd say well where'd he go next thing i know he's in my mirror and i'd look behind me you'd be smoking a cigarette and i got your ass i'm coming around you're coming around next time bye and we had some good battles together and i just like pierced a lot and i liked isaac a lot he was he was you know isaac was the most educated fellow in the world but he too was a he had a great racing mentality and i harry hyde was one of my best friends harry was from louisville kentucky uh we had met a few times harry helped me uh harry helped me a lot through the years and i was i liked harry he was a good friend of mine i'll tell you donnie came over and saw the four tailed egg and you could just see in his eyes and his his face and well it was all it was all just coming back so when you talk about the history it was just like looking at him and i was just like oh this is like really struck a nerve and he acted like he just raced it yesterday the way he was talking yeah well bobby and i were great friends when we started because pb crown who lives in franklin bobby built all the pb's cars down his shop in hueytown and so bobby and i became great friends and judy and bobby and stevie and i we we stayed at their house we worked on our cars i worked on my cars there he taught me he taught me everything i know about cars springs shocks how to set a front end uh and bobby he was we were great he was a great friend and and donny i didn't know donny that well but then as time went by and i started to be where i was competitive and i could race with those guys every week then that rate then bobby and i relationship kind of deteriorated uh i i when i got to where i could beat bobby he didn't like me anymore and i'll never forget donnie told me said you know why he doesn't like you because he's cheating so he knows you got to be cheating too so it was just and donnie and i we hung out together a lot he would drove for hoss ellington hoss was a you know crazy old car owner i met him and run and all those guys that was my i just i just liked that crowd and donny and i hung out together a lot but uh bobby bobby and i are good friends we all bobby and i've always been good friends we just have been we just we're not good friends on we were good friends off the racetrack we all and they're not same way earnhardt and i were great friends off the racetrack not always on the racetrack but away from the track uh most every guy i've ever known in racing you get them away from a racetrack and there's a totally different guy than the guy that you see at the track you don't put that the helmet yeah it's too tight i've looked at earnhardt's helmet a number what size helmet is this well it ain't big enough so when you started you know you said you were you were a small fish in a big pond you went from big to small and then you were the small fish in the big pond yeah at what point in your career did you go hey i think i'm okay at this i think i'm going to do all right well i i i felt like and and and i think you have to be you have to be confident in yourself and and maybe sometimes i was a little bit overconfident but nonetheless uh when i had my own cars and i knew how much money i had and i knew what i had i knew i knew i was taking second rate at best and competing i mean i couldn't outrun richard or bobby or david or kale or any of those guys but i could hang with them in in stuff that i bought from junior used parts i bought from junior johnson so i always felt like if i ever get in a good car i'm going to kick these guys ass that's just how i always felt and i was just beginning to get my my team capable of doing that when the knk insurance company when they folded harry hyde and all those guys i was at robert g's robert g is right across the street from where can cake where they kept the car larry reagan ray fox jr all those guys came to work for me and it wasn't like it wasn't like i was paying them a lot but they but i think i've always had people knew that they wanted to be with a winner and they knew i was a winner they knew if if i had the right car and i had everything going my way i was probably got some they were gonna have to beat that day so i had a lot of good people working for me and then dyeguard came along and i spent a lot of money uh i i'd go to hudson pagan i'd go to goodyear i'd go to cities wherever i'd go and i might i might run up a bill but i'd say look i'm not going anywhere i might owe you money and i'm but i'm going to pay you i may not be able to pay you today and i may not be able to but i'm going to pay you you don't have to worry about that so that kind of got me by and so i was right on the verge in 75 of of really putting together something special and uh then guy guard came along and they donnie was allison was driving for him and they fired donny fourth of july race because i passed donnie on the last lap to finish third or fourth or whatever it was and bill gardner who was turned out to be one of my better friends but we weren't always friends uh bill gardner said i don't know who that kid is in that 17 i want to hire him i'm tired of him he beats me every week we're spending a fortune he's not spending well i'm going to hire him and so we went to daytona fourth of july my family stevie's family had a house down at vero beach so we go down to vero and spend a couple of days i come back by daytona i want to pick up my check because back then you either you waited at the pay window or you know you wanted your money right away because you had to pay your bills so i stopped by daytona pick up my check and uh i don't remember who was who was there at the time maybe his bill friends i don't remember but they said have you seen bill gardner i said no why what's he want he said they want to hire you i said what they want to hire me for i got a lot better car and they got i don't need to be driving for them so anyway so i get my money and we're going down the road and steve said what did they want what were you talking about i said you won't believe this honey but bill french just told me that bill gardner had told him if he sees me to tell him he wants to talk to me they want to hire me and she said what'd you tell them i said well i laughed at them i said that's ridiculous i got a better car now are you out of your mind you know how much money we're so deep and that will never get out of debt and they want to hire you are you crazy i said well i can't do that to my guys i mean i'm just i just can't do that so we're going down the road from daytona to charlotte and they're going to robert g's house and we stopped at a gas station get some gas and who was there but jim gardner bill's brother and jim said we have been looking all over for you we want to hire you i said ain't no way man i got it in the middle of the year i got a car i got a team i got people i just don't see how that's possible he said here's my number call me when you get to charlotte so i'll get back in the car and we're going down and i tell stevie and she said you got to call him you got to call him so i get home and i call him and sure enough we strike up a deal until the middle of 75 i went to drive for dieguard and the only difference in their deal and my deal was i didn't have you know i was not i wasn't having to spend the money they were spending the money and i was getting to drive which is kind of a win-win for me but uh 75 we i think we may have i think i won one race maybe i won richmond i think i bet i think i might have beaten lenny pond at richmond that year in in in dygart's car it was my car but i had their name and everything on we had cars and they were better than theirs i love them we used my car's cup with that then in 76 we signed a gatorade deal we were still in daytona down on fencers boulevard and bill gardner who didn't know anything about racing he thought well nascar headquarters is here that's where we should be we need to be right next door to them which was actually a bad idea but nobody had the nerve to tell him but i didn't why why was it a bad idea well i think i know but i want to hear what you think they can send people over to shop anytime they want to what are y'all doing over here you know check out the motor check out the cars we're right next door to them you got to be you got to be a way up far apart so we anyway i finally talked him into moving to charlotte we did we hired robert yates uh we had buddy parrot david if um frog fagin we had um i we just had we had a hell of a bunch of guys and and the engine program uh ducky newman and um mario rossi was an engine guy when i first went there the engine lasts about 20 30 left ball to hell just knowing this couldn't couldn't finish a race so we moved to charlotte hire some good people yates comes to work for us the motors starts are good and then 77 i that was my first big year when i won i won darlington i think i beat bobby back to the finish line to win darlington i went to talladega one talladega and that was the start of a little run that we had there 77 78 79 we fought with richard right to the bitter end at ontario lost the championship by 11 points my fault made some bad decisions learned a lot of valuable lessons don't ever one of the things i took away from them was be don't beat yourself because i was that's what i did that year twice i beat myself twice if i hadn't done something stupid uh i would have been a champion in 79. then 80 gardner and i get in a battle about i don't want to drive the car and junior johnson wants to hire me and so we go through that whole rig of a row and finally i get out of the dyeguard deal and i go drive for junior and that was a big that was that was that was golden that was the one thing about him that just if you were to say describe describe junior johnson and what made him so good and so unique well i mean he was a genius and and you would never know see the thing that the thing about junior i raced against kale and herb and jake and me and we raced to you know we raced against those guys and i knocked his bumper off one week he knocked my bumper off the next one and so we were rivals really really really really big rivals and i'll tell you in 1980 the reason i went to drive for junior was kale came to me at charlotte in may and uh and cale and i had become pretty good buddies and kale put his arm around he said i'm going to tell you something boy he said i'm leaving juniors at the end of the year i said you've got to be kidding me he said i ain't told nobody else you're the only person that knows this he said but and i know what junior wants to hire you he said so you need to get to work and see if you can't get yourself in a position to get over there so that was that's how i knew that junior wanted to hire me you know and i thought god i mean can you imagine i'm a kid i'm in owensboro kentucky listening to the race on my transistor radio and every now and then i hear about this guy junior johnson junior johnson he runs moonshine he's a moonshiner he's been to prison he's been in prison he's driving a chevrolet nobody drives a chevrolet number two are you kidding me and he wants to hire me i was blown away i mean i i couldn't believe it and of course i had just signed a new three-year deal with dieguard because i had no i really don't have any other options so here i am just signing a new deal with dyeguard and the greatest car owner of all time wants me to drive his car so were you able to hold on to that secret so to speak from may until oh yeah okay because you can yeah so i started trying to figure out how i'm gonna get out his contract well it was irrevocable he couldn't it was they had some clauses in there you know gardner he was a he had all these attorneys to work for him and gardner was a diego was the first place ever when we had to sign a contract everywhere else a handshake doesn't see you later and that was across the board whether you were a crew member a driver a truck driver a floor sweeper everybody had to sign a contract and so anyway i had this contract that i said how am i going to get out of this well it took some it took a lot of manipulating and and a lot of things we did that probably couldn't get away with today but we got away with them and i was able to get out of that cause anyone thinking is there one thing you can share that you did well we taped a conversation that we shouldn't have taped okay that was one thing all right i'm just kidding but that's that was actually turned out to be not a bad thing it was a bad it was against the law but it wasn't a bad thing anyway we uh we got out of that contract and went drove for junior and that was that was the best thing i ever did it cost me 325 000 in 1980 to get out of that contract that's 100 000 per year that's a good chunk you know what the 25 was for we're in an office just like this i got to check for 300 000 which they didn't think i could come up with but i did junior got 100. uh my father-in-law got a hundred and pepsi gave a hundred so we all that's the three hundred thousand so we're about ready to sign the release and garnish the ho ho wait a minute you owe me 25 more thousand dollars what yeah you owe me 25 more thousand dollars he said i just thought about this i said what you're in the bush clash aren't you and they called the bush clash at the time i said yeah how'd you get there you got there in my car and you probably win it so i want my half of it now so he he was banking on you winning them yes already because he knew you were going to such good equipment yeah so he came up with 25 grand more and guess what you did it i wanted it so it took a little time to recover that 300 000 but we did and the 25 you know that was no big deal but um and and that was the start of one of the best times of my life six years i drove for junior and three championships and 50-some wins and just uh just an incredible time in my life speaking of incredible time you got the nickname jaws yeah hey don't run you own it okay so and back in the day was before we had all the social media and twitter and facebook and all that yeah where if someone looks at you sideways it's a big deal when that name that was kel yarbrough right he put that on you you didn't really run away from it and you know you you owned it and you you gloriously at times well made news or made waves let's say being daryl jaws waltrip yeah well the movie jaws had just come out so kale and i were racing each other in the southern 500 at darlington and he would lead and i'd lean and leave if i come off a corner turn two and dk over the middle of damn racetrack i went low and kill one high i got down in the sand and the stuff got on my tires and i come back up in the track and i hit kale and erect him and they asked hill what happened he said jaws wrecked me and i said jaws what the hell he said yeah you know all he does is go around chewing up cars that's what he that's what he's known for so anyway it stuck and a few weeks went by and and so i stopped so what so i'm jaws i don't really care you know you're you're short neck so what you know or no neck i actually didn't have it but anyway uh so we go to charlotte and humpty wheeler you know hopping on p.t barnum oh yeah so he decides he's going to get a shark so he went down at uh myrtle beach got a shark about a 10-footer live brought up to the racetrack put it on hooked it hooked it in the back of a wrecker and stuffed a chicken in his mouth and rode that around the track in the in the pre-race show and the chicken was because at the time so jaws just ate up the chicken and i at first i thought it was funny and then i thought nah this it's going a little too far and so anyway we we jaw stuck and i was jaws for a long time but it went from the sharking of cars to maybe you sign things and antagonizing we had the kale scale sure they'd say what's israel illinois kale skill was about a nine or you know richard he needed to get his prescription windshield changed i don't think he saw what happened that time you know just bad attitude bobby alex i just i i was having a ball i was having a time of my life unfortunately nobody was having fun but me uh and and it all came to a head uh charlotte i was leading the race and i blew up and i'd been to the kmart the week before or the friday night before the race and i had a line around the building and people were you know wanted to autograph and so i i wrecked on the back straightaway when the engine blew i'm right in front of this grandstand and i didn't know but it was the ford grandstand and bill elliott ended up winning the race but when i wrecked people started cheering and i was pissed i said you got to be kidding me i could have gotten killed so we go around and take me around and say what happened back here i said i don't know but i'm tell you right now i wish all those people could have met me at the kmart that's what i said but the next day in the newspaper it says waltrip challenges fans to meet him at the k-mart and i said no no no no that wasn't the way it went at all but anyway you know you can't retract it so anyway jaws would challenge people to come to kmart fight it out i guess i don't know but anyway it got kind of ugly after that and then i started down playing and then i and then we had kids i didn't we haven't we didn't have any kids so in 87 we had our first child jessica and that changed everything i changed my perspective changed my personality it just changed a lot of things because i was a dad you know i wasn't just a race car driver i wasn't just stevie's husband now i'm a dad jessica and i started thinking about me her and what's going to be like for her and so i went on a on a really i really personally went on a campaign to turn that all around and you don't change your image i mean once you got an image you're kind of stuck with it but in 1989 i won the most popular driver of the year and that and richard petty i'll never forget rich petty said that boy might win a lot of races but he ain't never going to win the most popular driver so yeah so i proved him wrong and then i did it again and 91 two years in a row i think other than earnhardt and uh and uh elliott i think i'm only other guys everyone there in the last 30 years that's names on that trophy besides theirs so when you look back at some of those moments did you like let's say even now or even when it took place to you do you go maybe i shouldn't have said that or i really need to say that no i'll tell you right now if i'd had to race against me i'd have whipped his ass update right now because it was not a nice band it would say things that were just unappropriate inappropriate shouldn't have been shouldn't be saying things like that but what you said or just what i would but anyway it was it was fun and and you know if i if if if kale won the race the headlines might be well waltrip said it didn't matter who won the race it'd be what i said or what i did and i i kind of liked that i did like the attacks i like that okay like i told you people say you talk about yourself a lot i said well i was afraid you weren't going to here we are here we are uh so when you were out racing you talked about when pierson or come up behind you who was the one guy on a restart you looked up in the mirror and said ah not him kel yarborough okay kale was like a junkyard dog man he was tenacious he lashed on that bone he wasn't going to let go of it and he was a tough competitor funny one of the funniest guys ever you know south carolina got that south carolina twang when he got inducted in the hall of fame some of the stories he told were hilarious uh i i'm a huge i love kale i think he's uh one of one of the best drivers we've ever had and bobby allison bobby was pretty tough too at the time so those those guys and certainly i don't want to look over and say earnhardt right that's the last guy i wanted to see i wanted to see him at the rear of the field if i was at the front i always loved earnhardt because i you know you raised her in heart he had to and uh i'll never forget man i'd be rude and i'd finally get around finally got by that sob and looked in the mirror and i think damn what was i thinking because they go wreck me now and you guys had your tangles on the track you guys you know they're here at richmond they show the famous or you two wipe each other out yeah was it um bodine goes by and takes the win so you guys had petty yep betty um so petty cowped correct thank you um so after the race is now i mean there's cameras all over did you guys have your conversations did you have your tussles that no one knows about that we didn't get to see always always was it verbal physical was it both i mean you never knew so you know you'd confront a guy after a race if you were pissed enough uh but now you know i'll never forget there's home race on it recently when i was still working and uh something happened on the track and a couple couple of guys got together and it was one you could obviously tell when it was at fault and i'll never forget what the guy said i'll text him tomorrow i said you got to be kidding me you're going to text him tomorrow what kind of what kind of confrontation is that his ass go whip his ass right now [Laughter] so anyway again it's evolved you know all right back today what's your most memorable post-race tussle confrontation conversation that you can remember oh man pick a good one well i won richmond and uh and i think i knocked i didn't mean to but the accident racing accident i think i slid richard up out of the way to to win the race um certainly the martinsville race in 87 that i won dale's leading terry's running second i'm running third and i bumped into terry going into tournament accident i mean too bumped into terry he bumped into dale they both spun out and i won the race um 89 win the daytona 500. um see the thing about that race people don't realize i just realized this myself i led the first lap of that race and now they did the last lap of that race it don't matter what happened in the middle you know it doesn't matter where you were or any of those things i wanted to let the first lap not one led the last lap that's all that mattered perfect but you don't have a post race like anyone that you had a oh listen um kind of trying to think of some of the i mean i had plenty of 84 wins you have for sure now 84 times certainly the all-star race you know when rusty spun me out on the last lap we had a hell of a fight that day uh that was a big deal uh but i don't know those they all kind of run together now there were some good days and some bad days uh speaking of good days as a driver what do you miss most um i don't think there's any better feeling than a car that's just handling like you that handles really well i know people say oh i missed the i miss all the people in the garage i don't i like the people in the garage but i don't care where they're not i really was concentrating on my car and you can ask hammond or or anybody that ever worked with me i mean i was a fanatic about that car and i learned that from bobby bobby taught me let the car do the work if you don't if the car if you've got to carry the car you're not going to last so you got to have the car carry you and so i i was i mean i can't tell you how many bristol races uh we'd be on the jack stands changing spindles or or something on the car when the other cars all be on the line except us because it just wasn't right and i had this knack i kind of learned it from pearson and others i knew how to make it go fast but i want to know how to make it go long and so what would go fast for one or two laps was not what you needed to run 500 laps or 500 miles so i really focused on having a car that was that was really good in the race long run car i really concentrate on that and that was i love my cars that's why i loved owning my own team because i love building the car and get it all finished and i was a detail i'm a clean freak you know i got a paper towels under one arm and a hand and a windex in the other it's not the clean freaking so everything had to be just right and the car had to be perfect and i'm i can't tell you how many people rusty wallace would come and say you got the neatest cars i've ever seen but it had to be that way if it wasn't run it had at least looked good so that was kind of where i was for a lot of the time but i don't know i i just i was just a little peculiar about some things and how car looked was one of them i always thought i had great looking cars paint jobs you know whether it was a gatorade car the mountain dew car the tide car the western auto car all those cars were extraordinarily good-looking cars i thought when you were so you came into the sport you were peeking you were making everybody mad you were winning and then guys were coming in behind you yeah what was that transition like for you when you realized that's hard yeah some of the hardest some of the some of the uh as exciting as winning a race and being in victory circle was it was just total opposite i mean i missed some races uh you know and there's some race i i didn't qualify for uh and i wasn't very competitive the last three or four years of my career and that hurt when you've been to the top it's it's not so bad if you kind of slide down the other side but when you fall down the other side that hurts and so i i again i think a lot of that was you know uh i think that was the lord working on me just you you think grayson is the greatest thing that's ever you've ever been involved in you need to think about that you might want a second you might want to you might want to get a second opinion about that so anyway who's the daryl walterbot today oh kyle bush no question i can't thought that hands down yeah yeah he uh he he picked up right where i left off and uh he hadn't hadn't let up much he's a little he's meddled out a little bit i mean every year i think it's every year the media says oh the new kyle bush well that doesn't last very long but uh you know there's probably who knows who will be the next who the next jaws you just never know but kyle's taking up the slack that i that i [Music] left

Channel: The Garage Shop

Views: 79,131

Rating: 4.8671775 out of 5

Keywords: safety Kleenexes motorsports, performance plus motor oil, nascar hall of fame, darrell waltrip, western auto, tide, nascar, Legend, Icon, role model, nascar driver, most popular, jaws, donnie allison, bobby allison, the garage shop, LabWare, goobers racing, Dodge Daytona, Ford Talladega, aerowars, bobby isacc, fox sports

Id: Y2kqI6kyeMQ

Length: 50min 25sec (3025 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021