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NCSHOF Member Dale Jarrett
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By HELEN ROSS
Dale Jarrett won a grand total of $35 the first time he drove a race car in competition.
The 20-year-old and two of his high school buddies tinkered with a 1968 Chevy Nova and got it ready for the Limited Sportsman race. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning -- he started last among 24 cars because they hadn’t gotten to Hickory Motor Speedway in time to qualify.
Even so, Jarrett finished ninth with his father, Ned, a two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, watching in the stands. It was then that Jarrett knew he definitely wanted to go into the family business.
“I went up and told him, Look, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but this is exactly what I’ve been looking for and what I want to do,” he told PGATOUR.COM in 2017. “That was from one 25-lap race that I decided this is for me.”
Jarrett also harbored thoughts of playing golf professionally, though. He got the bug when he was 8 years old and the guys in his dad’s shop took a broken 2-wood and fitted it to him. He broke par for the first time at 14 and led his high school team to three conference titles.
Born in Newton, he was an outstanding athlete at Newton-Conover High School, also a standout in football and basketball there. But Jarrett was so good at golf, in fact, that South Carolina offered him a scholarship. He turned it down at what he called the 12th hour.
“I didn’t feel like I would give the studying the respect it deserved,” Jarrett told The Daily Gamecock in 2015. “My parents would’ve preferred me going after golf. In the back of my mind, I wanted to give racing a try.
Turns out that was the right decision for Jarrett, who is a single digit handicapper who once got down to a plus-1.
Jarrett raced from 1984 to 2008, making 668 starts, grabbing 16 poles and winning 32 times, which ranks him 21st all-time. He had a total of 163 top-five and 260 top-10 finishes, as well.
He competed against the legends of the sport, too – drivers like Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough, to name a few.
Jarrett won three Daytona 500s, holding off Earnhardt in 1993 and ’96 and Jeff Burton in 2000 – with his father, known as “Gentleman Ned” on the network call for all three. He also won the Brickyard 400 twice and the 1996 Coca-Cola 600.
Jarrett joined his father as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion in 1999. He also finished among the top five in the year-long competition on six other occasions.
The 2009 Food City 500 was Jarrett’s final start. He was recognized at the pre-race driver’s meeting and given a collage of photos by then-NASCAR president Mike Helton. His peers gave him a standing ovation.
“Enjoy this,” Jarrett told the men he had raced against so many times. “We all have our time in this, and mine has been fantastic. To me, it has been an honor and a privilege to be able to race in this series and say I raced with and against and sometimes beat the best in the world. Thanks for allowing me to do that. Enjoy it. It’s a great sport, you guys make it what it is.”
After Jarrett retired from racing, he followed in his father’s footsteps again and is working as a broadcaster. He was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011 – the latter recognition coming three years after Ned Jarrett got the call.
Ned Jarrett, who won 50 races during his career, was a 1990 inductee into the NCSHOF. Both Jarretts were selected among NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998.
“I knew I would never measure up to what he did,” Jarrett told The Daily Gamecock. “(Being inducted into the HOF) meant more to me than anything else because of Dad.”
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