How Cale Yarborough and CBS’s Gamble on the 1979 Daytona 500 Put NASCAR on the Map

Editor’s Note: We remember the great Cale Yarborough, who died at age 84 at the end of December. To honor his legacy that was cemented in NASCAR history at the 1979 Daytona 500 we are reposting this story that Autoweek originally published in 2019.

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By a factor of two, it’s generally accepted that the 1979 Daytona 500 was the most significant race in NASCAR’s 71-year history.

To this day—more than 40 years and eight U.S. presidents later—it’s likely more Americans still remember the spectacular finish of that race than any other. Blizzard-like weather across much of the country contributed to an unprecedented TV audience for the first live, full-distance coverage of a major race.

Footage of the last-lap crash between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison—followed by their fight in Turn 3 that included Bobby Allison—remains a staple of most Daytona 500 promotions.

This is how it went down.

CBS Sports president Neal Pilson snaked the Daytona 500 from ABC: “Ken Squier was our announcer when we did racing on delay, and he had a good relationship with the France family. In ’77 or ’78, he said we had a chance to get the property from ABC. I went down in ’78 and snuck around because I didn’t want ABC to know I was there. Ken and I eventually told (NASCAR president) Bill France that we’d do the 500 live if ABC didn’t get it live first. CBS management had challenged us to get as many of ABC’s top-quality events as we could, so we were on a mission. We paid a significant increase in rights fees to get the deal done.”

And was there ever a happier winner than Richard Petty, who raced that Sunday afternoon despite pleas from doctors to stay home and recover from his recent stomach surgery?

The weather’s role? A snowstorm paralyzed most of the eastern and northeastern United States. Millions of families were homebound because highways, airports, and public transportation hubs were closed between Atlanta and Boston. The Saturday night storm was worse than expected and caught almost everybody unprepared. People had little choice but to stay inside and watch television.

From the 1979 National Weather Service archives: “It was one of the coldest Februarys on record from the eastern portions of the Great Plains through the Midwest to the North Coast states. The combination of cold and wet weather east of the Continental Divide yielded one of the snowiest Februarys on record in the Middle Atlantic states.”

In Delaware, Dover got 26 inches of snow that weekend. Baltimore and the Newark–New York area had 20. Washington, D.C., had 18. Atlantic City, Boston, and Wilmington, Delaware, each had 17. Over in Pennsylvania, Harrisburg had 14 inches. Chicago got 12. It was minus 52 in Old Forge, New York, on race day, minus 15 in Caribou, Maine, and 10 degrees in Boston.

Autoweek spoke with most of the major players who had a role in making that race so memorable. We also have archived television commentary from Cale Yarborough and the transcript of Motor Racing Network’s call of the famous last-lap wreck and the equally famous post-race fight.

The late Barney Hall began the call of the last lap from the Motor Racing Network booth.

“Here they come out of Turn 4. The white flag is in Chip Warren’s hand as he gets ready to display it to Donnie Allison. Cale just tucked in there. When will Yarborough make his move? They flash across the stripe and white flag for Donnie Allison. They’re back in Turn 1.”

Veteran radio and TV broadcaster Mike Joy was there: “Last lap. Donnie Allison is 20 car lengths back of brother Bobby. Donnie leads Cale Yarborough by two car lengths. They run up the racetrack. The Busch Oldsmobile stays aligned right on the back bumper of Donnie Allison. They’re out of Turn 2. They’re down the back stretch. Here goes Cale on the inside!!!”

Announcer Gary Gerould was waiting: “Cale makes his move. He’s down very close to the grass. Donnie tries to cut him off. Cale’s in the grass! Cale loses it! He tries to pull it back. They’re side by side. They make contact. Both head for the wall. They hit the wall in turn No. 3. We’ll have a new leader. They’re diving down to the infield now as we look for the leaders coming up the back straightaway.”

Co-anchor Jack Arute from the booth: “They’re in Turn 2 in front of Mike Joy.”

Joy: “Here comes Richard Petty. He leads Darrell Waltrip by five car lengths. Five more lengths back to A.J. Foyt. Race traffic. Waltrip closes, but Petty is up there.”

Arute: “Caution is on the racetrack, and it will be a battle back to the start-finish line.”

Gerould: “Heavy traffic in 3. Waltrip is running behind Petty. A.J. Foyt is right there. They move to the high side. They want to pass Tighe Scott. Richard brings them into 4.”

Eli Gold, the legendary voice of Alabama football, was there: “Richard Petty takes the outside. He’s got Darrell Waltrip close behind. Two car lengths back to A.J. Foyt. Richard Petty takes it to the tri-oval. He’s got the advantage right now.”

Hall: “Here they come to the stripe. Richard Petty’s STP Oldsmobile. Waltrip dives to the inside, and Petty almost put him off in the grass. And Richard Petty will win the Daytona 500.”

Moments later, while Hall and Arute were recapping the race.

Gerould cut in: “Cale and Donnie . . . both out of their cars. Bobby Allison has brought his car down there. A furious discussion is taking place just down below the banks of Turn no. 3. Now it appears we might have a fistfight. We see drivers and helmets. Safety officials are trying to jump in there and separate them. Tempers have really flared after this amazing incident on the last lap coming into Turn no. 3. They battle on the ground at this time. We can’t see as others come running in to surround and separate these drivers.”

Arute quickly changed the subject: “In the meantime, it’s a very jubilant crew that’s heading to victory lane. We’ll be talking with them shortly, but first: From Daytona International Speedway, this is the MRN Broadcasting Co.”

Also on TV that day, Feb. 18: ABC aired its Superstars show and later WBA junior lightweight boxing from San Juan between Sammy Serrano and Julio Valdez. NBC had college basketball, with no. 5 Duke beating no. 9 Louisville by 16 in Charlotte, then Bruce Lietzke’s two-shot victory in the PGA’s Joe Garagiola Tucson Open.

Michael Hunt, a Florida attorney, has attended every Daytona 500: “I was 15 and excited to be there for the first live, start-to-finish televised race. They started on time and ran under green and caution for 15 laps because the track was wet (from morning rain). We had good seats (at $45), but they weren’t high enough to see past the infield scoreboard. I didn’t see clearly what happened in the crash, but I saw them go up into the wall at the end of the back stretch. I was listening to MRN and knew that Cale and Donnie had wrecked. It wasn’t until we got home and saw on the news what had happened in the wreck and the fight.”

Duane Cox, an Army-trained optician, watched the 500 from his home in snowy Virginia: “I woke up that Sunday morning excited because I was going to see an entire major race live on TV. I’d seen some big races in person, but all I’d ever seen on TV was the back half of the Indy 500 or the Daytona 500 on Wide World of Sports. They’d have logrolling or cliff diving, then a little racing from the weekend before. This CBS thing was a big deal. I was glued to the TV all day.”

Dale Inman was crew chief for most of Petty’s 200 wins: “When he took the white flag, I said, ‘Richard, we’re running for third with Darrell and A.J.’ Donnie and Cale were long gone; no way he was gonna catch ’em. We didn’t have spotters (or big-screen TVs) back then, so I didn’t know what was happening when there was this big commotion in the grandstands. I didn’t have any idea until he came around (Turn 4) ahead of Darrell and A.J. He had taken the white flag 17 seconds behind. You just never know about this stuff.”

Richard Petty is a seven-time champion and seven-time Daytona 500 winner: “When I took the white, I didn’t even see Donnie and Cale. That’s how far ahead they were. Completely out of sight by about half a lap. I knew that whoever came around first (among himself, Waltrip and Foyt) would be third. That’s what we were racing for. All of a sudden, the yellow comes on in Turn 2. I looked ahead and didn’t see anybody. Not Donnie. Not Cale. No lapped cars. Nobody. I looked in the mirror and didn’t see anybody except Darrell and Foyt. I didn’t know what was going on. Back then, we raced back to the caution flag, so that’s what we did.”

Donnie Allison won 10 races and had a memorable career despite never running the full schedule: “As God is my witness—and on my mother, who was a very good lady—I never intended to block Cale. He had all the room he wanted on the outside. If he’d gone out there, I wouldn’t have gone up there to block. But he hit me in the back bumper before he hit me in the side. He put himself on the apron, not me. I was determined that he wasn’t going to get under me going down that back stretch. I had that (lead) position, so he was going to have to go around me. I wasn’t getting into Turn 3 with him inside me. But I didn’t put him on the apron and I didn’t block him.”

Cale Yarborough won three straight Cup titles and 84 races, including three Daytona 500s: “All the pictures show that when I made my move on the back stretch, Donnie just ran me completely off the track. When I got in the mud (from the morning rain), I was out of control. I never turned back into him. I never tried to wreck him. I had him beat coming down the back stretch. I had the slingshot all set up. I knew that, but he knew that, too, and that was the problem. No doubt about it, I was going to win the race.”

Petty realized the unthinkable was happening in front of him. “It wasn’t until we got down into Turn 3 that I saw two cars down in the grass, all wrecked up. It took me a second to realize they were the front two. So, all of a sudden we go from running for third to running for first. But nobody did anything different . . . me, Darrell and A.J. We went through 3 and 4 pretty much the same way we’d been running before that. Dale didn’t know what was happening until the front two cars didn’t come around.”

Darrell Waltrip was thinking this wasn’t going to be his day: “It looked like we were going to finish fourth. I’m pretty sure we were all happy about that because it had been a long, tough day, and we had made changes to our car all day, every pit stop. On the last lap, the leaders were so far ahead we didn’t know where they were. When we drove into 1 and 2, the caution lights came on. I remember all three of us (Petty, Waltrip and Foyt) let up for a second, then took off again. About halfway down the backstretch, I could see two cars down there in the mud, and then I could see it was Cale and Donnie. I’m thinking, ‘Holy crap, we got a chance to win this thing.’ We kept going, and I made a little dive at Richard at the start-finish line and finished second. I was elated. I couldn’t believe that the car ran as bad as it did all day long, and we got a second-place finish in the Daytona 500.”

David Reep was a track safety worker near Turns 3-4: “All of a sudden, we heard a commotion. As Cale and Donnie came into 3, they were up in the wall. They slid to the grass in front of our truck. I’m like, ‘What the heck’s going on?’ Next thing I know, third-place and fourth-place (cars) come flying by. I was elated because third was Petty, my favorite driver. And Darrell was right on his tail.

“We got dispatched out, and all the participants got together. There were a lot of heated words. Next thing you know, it’s a full-blown fight. It started with Cale and Donnie, but got out of control when Bobby came up. You could tell that Cale was upset with Bobby. They had some heated words and then started fighting. The first part was Cale swinging his helmet around. Bobby was the first to get involved with the actual fisticuffs. Donnie was in it a little, but the main deal was Bobby and Cale.”

Donnie Allison was crushed to see his Daytona 500 win slip away: “Cale and I got out of our cars and exchanged a few words. We went back and forth a few times. But, really, I was so hurt. I should have won the Daytona 500 at least three times and there I was, sitting in the infield. That’s when Bobby came up, and all hell broke loose.”

Bobby Allison is a three-time Daytona 500 winner and the 1983 Cup Series champion: “I stopped at the wreck to check on Donnie and offer him a ride back to the garage. I wasn’t involved in the wreck at all, but Cale started yelling that I’d caused it. When I questioned his ancestry, he hit me in the face with his helmet. Donnie took off his helmet, too, but I was smart enough to keep mine on.”

Reep had a front-row seat for racing history: “There were a lot of people pulling and grabbing. Finally, we got the three main guys separated, and it cooled down. I think they all realized they had just lost the Daytona 500. By the time it was over, there were about 20 people around. Not everybody got super-involved, but everybody wanted to see what was going on.”

Gary Gerould was calling the unthinkable: “Then I looked down, I saw the fight. All of a sudden, I’m delivering a blow-by-blow of a fight. I’d seen dirt-track fights, but nothing like at this level. The (MRN) tower is telling me (in his earpiece) to back off the fight stuff. Well . . . I’m not gonna do that because the fight is what’s going on. This is news, this is what’s happening, this is going to be on the front page of every newspaper the next day.”

Waltrip left the track shaking his head: “I think everybody was in shock. We couldn’t believe those two knuckleheads wrecked each other coming to get the checkered. They were down there in the mud, wrestling around, fighting. It didn’t take long to figure out what happened. They wrecked each other, and Bobby had stopped. They were all three wallowing around. We didn’t care because we finished second. More power to them for wrestling in the mud. I hope you have a good time down there.”

Bobby Allison called it a dogfight: “Cale was a little bulldog, but Donnie might have been even more of a bulldog. Let me tell you something: Cale Yarborough didn’t want any part of Donnie Allison. There I was, this little wimp, so Cale decided to pick on me. But his nose kept running into my fist.”

Cox broke it down from a fan’s perspective: “When it was all over, I wrote a letter to National Speed Sport News. I was perturbed that Cale had run over Donnie, the leader. After the second contact, I knew it was going to be bad. Cale went down and Donnie cut him off­—which was his right. If you’re the leader, the other guy has to find a way around you. Cale just wrecked them both while I was looking right at it. It was one of the biggest things that ever happened to racing in this country.”

Hunt never imagined what he was watching would turn into a positive for the sport: “I was disappointed in how it ended. I wasn’t a Richard or Darrell fan, so I was pulling for A.J. But I was also disappointed that the race and the fight reinforced the national stereotype of those who race and those who go to races. It was not a good portrayal of the sport. I was disappointed at the conduct of the participants.”

CBS’s Neal Pilson couldn’t have been ­happier: “It was an unbelievable day. It got a 10 rating (about 15.1 million viewers), unheard of for NASCAR, and was front page at the New York Times. If the Sunday weather had stayed bad and we’d run on Monday or Tuesday, we might have gotten a 3 or 4 rating. NASCAR wouldn’t have gotten nearly as big a boost as it did. It was a perfect storm, a watershed moment, one of the events you’ll always remember. The way it turned out was one of the most incredible days of my life.”

Petty added: “No question, we lucked into that one. But we’ve lucked out of some, too. If you do this long enough, you’ll luck into as many as you luck out of. Eventually, they even out.”

Yarborough summed it up best: “That’s the race that really turned NASCAR on. It did more for NASCAR than anything they had ever done. People are still talking about it.”