DARLINGTON — Cale Yarborough has never been one to concede many things.
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But when Yarborough was asked who the better driver was at Darlington between him and David Pearson, he didn’t hesitate.
“David was,” Yarborough said as the two drivers shared their memories Saturday before the Southern 500. “He won 10 and I won five. David could win all the spring races and I had good luck in the 500.”
Each of the Palmetto State drivers won their first Darlington race in the same year.
Pearson, who leads all drivers with 10 Darlington victories, got his first win at the track in the 1968 Rebel 400. Yarborough followed by winning the Southern 500 later that year.
After that, two were considered the ones to beat at the Lady in Black.
From 1968-82, Pearson or Yarborough won at least one race at the track in all but four years. Seven of Pearson’s 10 victories came in the spring, while all of Yarborough’s five wins were Southern 500s.
And Yarborough and Pearson think their wins at the track were a lot tougher than the ones today. They talked about the three days of practice and how hard it would be to get used the track on a yearly basis.
“Racetrack is nowhere near as it was then. It is like a different place, nothing like it used to be,” said Pearson, a Spartanburg native.
The track, which was repaved after the duo’s 1968 wins, also was even narrower back then and there were no SAFER barriers. Instead, the walls were guardrails like the ones used on interstate highways.
And the best way to get around the track was to lightly touch the guardrail coming out of Turns 3 and 4.
“I tried to stay away from it,” Yarborough said. “But if you were going to win here that’s what you had to do.”
There was one time, though, when Yarborough missed that guardrail entirely as he went over the wall after making contact with Sam McQuagg’s car in the 1965 Southern 500. Yarborough ended up in the parking lot next to a telephone pole.
Yarborough showed his children and grandchildren that area, which is now used as press box media parking.
“My car never touched the guard rail and it was destroyed,” Yarborough said. “I waited a little and didn’t know when the ambulance was going to come, so I just walked back up the hill and into the track.”
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