Hot Son : Father Ned Won Big, but Dale Jarrett Could Earn $1 Million With Victory Today

DARLINGTON, S.C. —  Dale Jarrett was 8 when his father, Ned, won the Southern 500 in 1965 at Darlington Raceway.

“I remember it well,” Dale said. “The Camden High School band was there and played the national anthem. We lived in Camden then, it was just a few miles down the road and I thought it was neat they were there. Most of the time I was running around the infield with kids like Kyle Petty [Richard’s son] and Larry and Ricky Pearson [David’s sons].

“The biggest thing for me that day was that Doc and Festus were there from ‘Gunsmoke.’ That was really a big deal when I got to meet them.

“It wasn’t until we got back home to Camden and I think the whole town was waiting in our front yard and out in the street to celebrate Dad’s winning that I realized winning at Darlington was something special.”

Ned Jarrett won $21,060 that day. In a career that included two Winston Cup championships, he earned $240,000.

Today, in the 47th annual Mountain Dew Southern 500, Dale Jarrett can win $1 million in Winston Select Million bonus money from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., plus about $150,000 in prize money.

Jarrett is one of the hottest drivers in the Winston Cup series, having won two of the last four races, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis and the Michigan 400. He has finished on the lead lap in the last nine races and all four of his victories have been on superspeedways, where the horsepower in his Ford Thunderbird flourishes. Those included NASCAR’s biggest race, the Daytona 500; its longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, and the richest race, the Brickyard 400.

“Now I want to win the oldest one,” he said after qualifying on the pole at 170.934 mph for today’s race on Darlington’s quaint, 1.366-mile egg-shaped track set in the pine woods of South Carolina’s Pee Dee region, where Confederate flags still wave defiantly.

“It’s great to be on the pole because this is such a tough track to pass on,” Jarrett said. “Even if there’s hardly any cars in front of you at the start, it looks like there’s a hundred in front of you.

“We’re running the same car we won with at Charlotte and Michigan. This is my favorite car, since we can’t use the one that won at Daytona. I wish we had that one, but this one is fine.”

The Daytona 500-winning car is on display at the new Daytona USA exhibit center.

“If we can just stay out of trouble and have a good race car at the end, we’ll be in position to get that million dollars,” Jarrett said. “Just getting an opportunity to run for it is a great satisfaction.”

Jarrett got to this point by winning two of the first three premiere races this year--Daytona and the Coca-Cola 600. The fourth is today’s Southern 500 and the $1-million bonus goes to any driver winning three of four in the same year. Only Bill Elliott, in the program’s first year in 1985, has done it.

“I’m not turning up my nose at the money, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure, winning this race would be great even if the money wasn’t there,” Jarrett said. “Darlington has tradition that no other place has, and as drivers look at it, this is a driver’s race track.”

What that means is that Darlington is the most challenging track on the 31-race Winston Cup schedule.

“You look at Darlington and you see a lot of asphalt out there. It looks nice and wide open, but it’s not, not when 40 other cars are on the track. Patience is the most important thing a driver can have. If you start racing other drivers, the track’s going to get you.

“If you miss your line [in the turns] by six inches, you’re going to be completely out of sync for the next turn and more than likely, you’ll find yourself in the wall.

“Patience, patience, patience. You’ve got to have it here, more than any other place we race.”

The problem is that the first and second turns, banked at 25 degrees, are on a narrower radius--almost a U turn--than the 23 degrees of the wider third and fourth turns on the easterly end of the track.

Jarrett has been in 17 previous Winston Cup races here, has never won and has led only 43 laps. He did, however, win Busch Grand National races in 1990 and 1991.

“I know my way to Victory Lane here, don’t worry about that,” Jarrett said. “It might be 31 years ago, but I still remember going there with my dad, even though I was thinking more about being there with Doc and Festus than I was about him winning.”

Ned Jarrett won that race by a record 14 laps.

“I know I won by 14 laps, but I hope Dale doesn’t have to suffer the way I did,” the elder Jarrett said. “I knew no one was going to pass me, but every lap I sweated out something happening to the car. I was really nervous, strange as it my sound.”

Dale laughs when his father talks about his victory.

“I guarantee you, if I’m 14 laps ahead Sunday, I’ll find a way to bring it home,” he said. “Joking aside, though, I know how much winning the Southern 500 at Darlington means to him. He wouldn’t take $10 million for that win.”

His father will be nervous again today. He will be in the TV booth working as a commentator for ESPN during the race.

“It’s a special challenge for me,” Ned said. “I don’t want people to think I’m using my position to shill for him or that there’s any favoritism. I would prefer that Bob [Jenkins] or Benny [Parsons] say what needs to be said about Dale.”

What advice would Ned give his son?

“You can’t race the other competitors at Darlington, you have to race the race track,” he said. “I know Dale knows that, but sometimes it’s tough to race hard and still be patient.”

How about the other competitors? Will they move over, or will they race even harder against Jarrett?

“Well,” Dale said, “there’s been a whole bunch of them telling me and Robert [car owner Yates] that they’ll let me pass them for a price. We figured it up the other day and if I won the million, it would cost us about $2 million to pay everyone off.”

Somewhat overlooked in the million-dollar hype is that Jarrett is also in the running for the Winston Cup championship, which carries a $1.5-million payoff. He is third, 127 points behind leader Terry Labonte and 13 behind defending champion Jeff Gordon.

“If it came down to one or the other, the championship is the ultimate goal of every race driver,” he said. “There’s pressure to win every week. I have a job to do every race for my team and my sponsors and that’s to win races, so I don’t feel any more pressure right now than I did to win at Bristol last week.

“So far, this is just a bonus for us. As far as pressure is concerned, if we were putting up the million and had to win to get it back, now that would be pressure. I look at it as something we can only gain, not lose.”

Jarrett’s stiffest challenge may come from Ernie Irvan, whose No. 28 Thunderbird sits next to Jarrett’s No. 88 in Yates’ garage.

“The ideal scenario for us would be for the 88 car to win the race and the 28 car to come in second,” Jarrett said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Ernie is going to try and win the race. He’s going to try and outrun us just as bad as everybody else. We’ve finished 1-2 before. I just hope to reverse things the next time.”

Irvan won at Sears Point in May when Jarrett was second.

“Ernie and I, and our crews, work together between races, but once the green flag drops, there’s no teamwork involved. He’s got his sponsor and we’ve got ours and they’re both expecting a win.”

But what if he and Ernie actually are running side by side the last two laps?

“I hope I’m on the inside.”