TheState.com: Racing

Menard leaves DEI for Yates

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:15 EDT

CHARLOTTE — Paul Menard is heading to Yates Racing at the end of the season in a switch certain to hurt Dale Earnhardt Inc. DEI is losing both a driver and a sponsor at a time when a bleak economic outlook has made funding difficult.

The decision was reported by The Associated Press on Monday night and was announced Tuesday.

Menard is winless through two Sprint Cup seasons driving the No. 15 for DEI. He’s 28th in the standings with one pole and a season-best finish of 11th at Michigan in June.

He called it a “great opportunity” at Yates, where his sponsorship will come from his father’s hardware chain. Menard pointed to the success of owner Doug Yates and the Ford Motor Company.

“They’ve created a lot of horsepower and hoisted quite a few trophies over the years,” he said in a statement. “I’d like to help continue that for both of them.”

Staying alive: The track 'Too Tough to Tame' plays host to its first historic festival

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:56 EDT

For more than a half-century, they made their pilgrimages to the big concrete, asphalt and steel track in Darlington. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, multiple generations of race fans marked their calendars each year with a big, red circle around Labor Day weekend — the dates for the Southern 500.

Darlington Raceway, aka “The Lady in Black” and “The Track Too Tough to Tame,” was their cathedral, where they worshipped NASCAR’s heroes. Pearson, Allison, Petty, Yarborough, Elliott, Gordon and His Holiness, Earnhardt — all of them came every blistering-hot, end-of-summer holiday to run the big, egg-shaped oval, hoping to claim one of stock-car racing’s crown jewels.

And so did their fans. Because if you loved racing, where else would you be?

This weekend, after four long years, they have come again.

No, the Southern 500, gone since 2004, is not back, though Darlington’s April race will bear that proud name in 2009. But many of the sport’s legendary drivers and their cars, and thousands of their loyal followers, have returned.

Nothing like the first time

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:55 EDT

Nearly a half a century ago, somewhere on a darkened two-lane road between Columbia and Level Cross, N.C., Richard Petty had his moment of epiphany.

The 21-year-old had been around racing since his dad, Lee, took the family sedan down to Charlotte in 1949 and wrecked it in the first NASCAR race. This moment was different.

As the three young adventurers headed home on that night of July 12, 1958, the younger Petty finally realized what he had done that day.

“I don’t know that there was a time during the race because I was busy. But just going up the road I was thinking, ‘You know, that wasn’t bad. I liked that,’” the 70-year old racing icon said this month as he recalled the day of his first race.

“I do know that going home, with me and Dale Inman and Red Myler in a pickup truck, we got out of a town about the North Carolina border. I told Dale, ‘You know what? I think I’m gon’ like this driving.’”

Florence County: Cale Yarborough wins off track, too

Sun, 11 May 2008 01:39 EDT

FLORENCE — The caller asked for a few minutes of his time, and Cale Yarborough obliged, setting up an appointment for a Monday morning in May.

Another fan, the stock-car legend figured, and he made a note on his calendar.

After all, although he has not raced in two decades, Yarborough receives numerous requests for autographs. “I get letters every day from all over the world,” he says.

The visitors, a couple from Louisiana, turned out to be fans, all right, but they brought out another side of one of South Carolina’s most treasured athletes. They appreciated Yarborough from a different perspective.

His three championships and 83 victories and all the other records matter, but something else mattered more.