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closeFrom Catawba County roots, Jarrett has grown a stout career
Driver's offers glimpses of memories
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Friday, May. 16, 2008
That's Jarrett on the left with Andy Petree in the middle and Jimmy Newsome on the end. The picture was taken in 1977 at Hickory Motor Speedway, site of Jarrett's first race.
"Jimmy and I were in the same grade in school. He was a great athlete and we played a lot of sports together," Jarrett said. "Andy worked for Jimmy some. He just loved racing a lot. His dream was to drive the car, but it never happened."
That's because Petree and Newsome needed an engine to go in it first. Jarrett's father, Ned, was the promoter at the Hickory track after having won two NASCAR championships. He helped his son get an engine and, because Dale got the engine, he got to drive.
Newsome still lives in Newton, where all three of them went to high school at Newton-Conover. He owns Newsome Tire. Petree went on to become a NASCAR crew chief and Cup team owner. Now, he and Jarrett work alongside Dr. Jerry Punch - yet another Newton-Conover graduate - in the ABC/ESPN booth.
"Andy and I never did work together in NASCAR," Jarrett said. "My dad helped him get a job with Junior Johnson changing tires. He moved on from there.
"When Andy got his own team, we talked about a deal that he was working on with the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones, but it never materialized."
The Brothers Jarrett
"That's me racing my brother, Glenn," Jarrett said.
"Glenn is in the 24 on the outside there. It looks like Hickory. It probably is. This is the Late Model Sportsman days."
Glenn Jarrett is 57, six years older than Dale.
"We tried to help each other as much as we could," Dale said. "I’ve always looked up to Glenn. He's smart and he was a good driver. He just never got that opportunity."
Why No. 32?
"Andy's favorite driver was David Pearson, who was No. 21,” Jarrett said. "Jimmy's was Richard Petty, who was No. 43. Mine, of course, was my dad, who was No. 11.
"So you can look at it in a lot of different ways. You can add 21 and 11 and you get 32. Or you can subtract 11 from 43 and you get 32.
"If you took 21 and 43 and added it up, you had 64 and half that is 32. Every way we went about it, it came to 32."
Busch Series helped driver find success
Jarrett ran six full seasons, from 1982 through 1987, in the Busch Series and continued to run partial Busch schedules until 1998.
He was wearing the Nestle's Crunch colors he had for 1990 and 1991 when he had five of his 11 victories in what is now the Nationwide Series. Without the success he had in those cars, he might never have held on long enough to get a decent shot in Cup.
"Those were good days," Jarrett said.
I did a lot of the work on my own cars and even though we had a lot of good people helping us, I was pretty much setting them up. I enjoyed that side of it."
A career-maker with the Wood team
Jarrett edged Davey Allison by a matter of inches to win the Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan Speedway in his 129th Cup start on Aug. 19, 1991.
Jarrett didn't have a ride in the Cup Series to start the 1990 season, but when Neil Bonnett was injured in a crash at Darlington, S.C., the Wood Brothers put him in their No. 21 Ford for the rest of that season.
"I was basically out of the sport of Winston Cup racing when the Wood Brothers called me," Jarrett said.
"That was the break that set my career in motion. When I won at Michigan that day, I think that was really the start of my career. I owe the Wood Brothers more than I could ever repay them."
A big opportunity knocks
Jarrett moved to a new team for the 1992 season, one being started by Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs.
"When I was a kid, the NFL games we saw every week were the Redskins games," Jarrett said. "The first night I got a call from Joe Gibbs, that was pretty cool.
"Joe Gibbs gave me a great opportunity as a race driver. But he did so much more for me and my family and helping me look at things in my life a lot different, and literally get my life back on track.
"I owe him a lot. ... I still look at him in awe of this man and all he's been able to do and people he's been able to help."
Father and son and a Daytona victory
Jarrett opened the 1993 season memorably, winning the Daytona 500 and giving Joe Gibbs Racing its first victory.
Jarrett passed Dale Earnhardt on the final lap and came to the checkered flag with his father, Ned, calling the action for the national television broadcast on CBS in one of the most memorable moments in NASCAR TV history.
"This picture was actually taken the next week at Rockingham," Jarrett said.
"A lot of the guys didn't get the shot because it took so long for my dad to get down from the TV booth. So we kind of re-enacted things."
Repeating and beating the best
In 1996, for the second time in his career, the last man Jarrett passed on the way to winning the Daytona 500 was Dale Earnhardt.
"The first one I only had to keep him back there about three-quarters of a lap," Jarrett said.
"That was hard enough. This one I passed him with 24 to go and had to keep him behind me. That's what made them special. I had to beat the best race car driver I'd ever raced against."
The Brickyard times 2
When Dale was young, Ned Jarrett would bring him to Charlotte so they could watch the closed-circuit telecast of the Indianapolis 500.
"When we finally got to go there in 1994 to race, it was just incredible," he said.
Jarrett crashed out early in the first Brickyard 400, but finished third in 1995.
"Then in 1996 I passed Ernie Irvan with about five laps to go (actually, seven) down in Turn 1," Jarrett said. He and Irvan, teammates at Robert Yates Racing, finished 1-2.
"Just racing there was good enough, but to win and think about the people who'd been in that Victory Lane was incredible."
Todd Parrott, Jarrett's crew chief, tapped him on the shoulder during that celebration and told the driver to follow him. The team went to the yard of the old paving bricks that once made up the historic track's surface, knelt and kissed the bricks.
Every Brickyard 400 winning team since has done that.
"I had the fastest car I have ever had there in 1998 and we ran it out of gas," Jarrett said. "We let that car sit for an entire year and we brought it back and got the job done in 1999."
The most special season
Ask Jarrett what the best day of his racing career was and he goes to 1999 when he clinched the Winston Cup championship at Homestead, Fla., with one race left in the season.
"Everything that I had ever dreamed of happened in 1999," he said.
"There we were being recognized and celebrated as the champions of one of the major sports in the world. We worked hard to get there.
"It's the perfect opportunity to let everyone know and see that if you have dreams, follow them and work hard, good things can and will happen. That was just the most special year. I have had a lot of good things happen professionally and personally, but to be able to share that with family was the most special."
Elite group at Daytona
Jarrett celebrated his third Daytona 500 victory in 2000.
"I was told after the first one that it would be the moment that would define my career," he said of winning the sport's biggest race.
"Then to do it two more times? There's only a handful of us who've won it three or more times. That group is a very select group and I am very proud to be in it."
Only seven-time winner Richard Petty and four-time Daytona 500 champion Cale Yarborough have won more.
Jarrett, Jeff Gordon and Bobby Allison have each won that race three times.
Pocono pyrotechnics
Not every one of Jarrett's 668 Cup starts turned out well.
"This was at Pocono and it was about the scariest moment I ever had in a race car," he said.
"We had just pitted and I was running in the top five and had a great car. I went down the front straightaway and I felt a little bit of a shake. I thought it was OK, but just as I got to Turn 1, I backed out of the gas and the tire exploded. I had a full tank of fuel.
"That was the first time I'd really had fire that close to me. I run my earplugs up through my chin strap just to keep them kind of out of the way and then put them in. This fire was so close to me that without burning me it burned the wires of the earplugs in two. How it didn't burn me I don't know.
"Every time I went to get out of the car, that radio cord pulled me back. I changed it the next week."
The best of times
Geoffrey Bodine won the first Cup race Jarrett started in 1984 at Martinsville.
Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Neil Bonnett, Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Buddy Baker, Richard Petty, Harry Gant, Rusty Wallace, Ricky Rudd, Tim Richmond and Terry Labonte were just some of the other drivers in that 30-car field.
Jarrett has since seen new generations of drivers, like Jeff Gordon, come into the sport he's been part of for more than two decades.
Jarrett ends his career with 32 points race victories (tied with Tony Stewart for 20th all-time). He ran more than 236,000 competitive miles and earned $60 million.
"To have done all of this, win races and compete with all of these guys and have friendships and rivalries and arguments with some of those who'll go down as the best drivers who’ve ever raced - I came along at a perfect time."
