First win, at 34, an anomaly in today’s multimillion-dollar NASCAR world
Patience has its rewards, retiring Dale Jarrett finds
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Friday, May. 16, 2008
Dale Jarrett was 34 years old when he won his first race in what is now the Sprint Cup Series.
At least 30 drivers in NASCAR history were older when they won for the first time, but only one, Lee Petty, wound up winning more races than Jarrett has.
Petty won 54; Jarrett closed out his Cup career with 32.
You point that out to show how unusual Jarrett's career has been.
With the way the sport has changed since he got that first win, driving for the Wood Brothers at Michigan in 1991, the man who'll drive for the last time in Saturday night's Sprint All-Star Race at Lowe's Motor Speedway might be the last to get the chance to wait so long to be so good.
"I don't know if I went about it the same way - not driving a car until I was 20 - I don't know that I would have made it in this day and time," Jarrett said this week as he looked to his valedictory drive in the No. 44 Toyota owned by Michael Waltrip Racing.
"The thing that's difficult and has always been true about our sport, and still is to this day, is wherever you start, somebody has to have some money," Jarrett said. "It's a good thing it was cheaper to go about it at that time. It was more forgiving. With what most of us started in, you weren't looked to as having to have success immediately."
Could a driver go 128 starts without winning and keep a ride with one of today's top-tier teams? Jarrett did that, but are there car owners and sponsors with the kind of patience it would take to let someone race that long without a win?
Are there drivers determined enough to keep doing whatever they had to do to stay in the sport and be there the way Jarrett was in 1990 when Neil Bonnett got injured in a crash at Darlington and the Wood Brothers gave him a call?
Probably, but with the sport's fascination with youth these days, the likelihood that call would ever come seems to be much lower than it was nearly 20 years ago.
"We talk about having fewer car owners out there and how that impacts things," Jarrett said. "I think that's another way it hurts things. Each one of those mega-teams is looking for that next superstar, and if you don't perform quickly, you can kind of get kicked aside.
"When that starts happening, that's the reputation you get. There will be some drivers who, given time and the right opportunity, could have done some good things but they won't have the chance."
Jarrett, 51, will have a front-row seat to see how things develop in the sport. He already has a job in the ABC/ESPN broadcasting booth, following his father Ned's path to a post-driving career in broadcasting. That will allow him to continue making contributions to a sport both have given a lifetime of passion.
Jarrett is as competitive as anybody you'll ever meet. He played several sports in high school and still wields a pretty mean golf club. But if you really want to stoke his flames, treat stock-car racing in a way he considers unfair or disrespectful. He simply will not abide that.
"I saw people like my dad and Richard Petty and Junior Johnson and Benny Parsons and Bobby and Donnie Allison - all of these people who came through that paid a huge price in their lives to help the sport grow," Jarrett said.
He remembers seeing his father, as a track promoter at Hickory Motor Speedway, literally sustaining the sport's future.
"I was in there the first night Dale Earnhardt came to Hickory and drove on pavement," Jarrett said. "He'd been a dirt racer and he came to Hickory. Dad had been onto him about coming. Dale didn't have the money to get back to Kannapolis that night. I saw my dad give him the money to help him do that."
As a driver who was winning races and competing for championships - he won the Cup title in 1999 - Jarrett was outspoken when he felt the sport was being slighted from the outside or even from within.
"When I see or when I think the sport is not being treated fairly, then I speak up," he said. "People now have so many opportunities in so many ways, to criticize the sport and look at it and talk about it. Sometimes that gets me going. I know what it took to build this platform and this foundation for it. I know the hard work and effort a lot of people put forth.
"My generation came along and I know a lot of us put everything into it. We've been rewarded very handsomely in a lot of ways. Still, it's not about that. It's about a sport I am still very passionate about. When I hear things I don't appreciate or see things happening in the sport that I don't think are the best, I have to speak up.
"I don't have all of the answers. I'm not always right. But I feel like I have to put my view in there sometimes."
His job with ABC/ESPN gives Jarrett a pulpit to keep talking about NASCAR. The broadcaster's role has changed since Ned Jarrett and Parsons were educating a new television generation about stock-car racing, and Jarrett is willing to take that on.
But as he leaves the sport as a driver, he believes he's leaving it better than he found it. If what he's done so far and what he'll do from now on keep adding up that way, he'll be happy with that.
"You don't have to know how many races I won or that I won a championship," Jarrett said. "You don't have to know what sponsors I had or cars I drove.
"Just know that what you got with me was a passion for the sport and I had the best interest of the sport at heart in 99 percent of the things I've done within the sport.
"I would appreciate it if people thought I was trying make the sport better, and I think in a lot of ways, things I did were able to help the sport grow. At the end of the day, that's what it's about."
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Last edited by mrsmopar12 : 05-16-2008 at 09:41 PM.
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