1979 Yarborough-Allison feud still radiates

Published: Monday, April 1, 2013 at 10:22 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, April 1, 2013 at 10:22 p.m.

On-track feuds between Sprint Cup drivers or crew members aren't new to NASCAR. Verbal jabs and physical blows routinely make the TV sports clips as well as newspaper and web site headlines around the world.

One very heated confrontation occurred on Feb. 18, 1979, the day CBS Sports chose to broadcast their first Daytona 500 live from start to finish. The 200-lap race at the 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway is remembered as one of the most memorable events in all of motorsports.

The spirited fight between Bobby Allison, his brother Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough lasted only about a minute. Some 34 years later, it's still being talked about and written about, even in book form.

It's an interesting story involving many of the iconic stars of that era.

NASCAR officials had plenty of headaches that February weekend. Heavy rain created much havoc over a busy schedule of events in the days leading up to the 500. Race day dawned cloudy and wet, requiring several hours to get the track dry.

Ironically, Yarborough and the Allisons spun out together on the backstretch on lap 31 and slid through deep mud puddles in the infield grass. With some assistance from wrecker crews, they got going again and made up the laps and track position lost. The early spin helped set the stage for the heated confrontation that occurred at race's end.

There were many leaders, including Neil Bonnett, Benny Parsons and Buddy Baker, to name a few. Eventually, Donnie Allison and Yarborough were able to return to the lead lap but Bobby was still one lap down in the closing laps. Donnie led 22 laps from laps 178 to 199 and the beginning of the white flag lap, signaling the checkered flag was just over two miles away.

As they came off of turn two and headed down the backstretch Yarborough dropped low to make the pass just before the two made hard contact, causing them to bounce off one another and then head-on into the third turn wall.

After exiting their badly wrecked cars, Allison and Yarborough exchanged heated words. Bobby stopped to offer Donnie a ride back to the garage, but the situation quickly escalated. Cameras caught Bobby pushing Yarborough to the ground as a shocked national television audience looked on. Millions of people were trapped by a major snowstorm that blanketed the entire east coast and were glued to their TV sets.

Race leader Richard Petty, second-place Darrell Waltrip and third-place A.J. Foyt found themselves racing for the win. Petty could have considered third-place a huge accomplishment, considering he had endured extensive stomach surgery a week earlier and was told by his doctors not to race.

Petty held off Waltrip at the start-finish line by a car length, scoring his sixth of seven career Daytona 500 wins. Each of the three drivers have talked about that brief but spirited battle hundreds of times to reporters and fans over the years.

"If I had to do it over, I would have done something different," Donnie said in a 2007 press conference at DIS. "But to be perfectly honest, it caught me by surprise. It caught everybody by surprise because how many times in the 50 years they run the Daytona 500 have you seen the leader and the second-place car wreck coming off of Turn two. Turn four yes. I expected something to happen down there.

"People don't realize and I'm not going to sit here and dwell on it but I never watched a car behind me in my mirror. For some reason or another, I looked up in that corner of my mirror and I saw him going down and I said, 'You are not going to get under me on the back straightaway' and the rest is history."

Bobby also remembers that day as if it were yesterday.

"Cale walked up and hit me in the face with his helmet as I sat in the car," Bobby said in the book, 'Circle of Triumph—The Bobby Allison Story.' "I saw blood on my driver's suit and said to myself, 'If I don't get out and address this right now, I will have to run from little ole' Cale Yarborough all my life.' So I got out and addressed it right there."

The three NASCAR stars are friends today, citing 'the fight' is long since in the past. Like the Allisons, Yarborough is still surprised the brief scuffle gained so much attention.

"I held my line and tried to go under him and we got together and everything went crazy from there," Yarborough said at Charlotte Motor Speedway last October. "But having that happen really introduced a lot of fans to NASCAR, with so many people snowed in and not able to go anywhere. Looking back on it, it may be one of the best things that happened to NASCAR, but I guess we didn't know it at the time."

Ben White is a motorsports columnist for The Dispatch.


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