Beware These Sunday Drivers

Millionaire stock car racers still go like the devil

Richard Petty, known as "the King" for his early dominance of the sport, has never lost the common touch, tirelessly signing autographs and posing for snapshots that will become treasured souvenirs in the scrapbooks of his loyal subjects. Cale Yarborough occasionally calls on his friend and longtime fan, who has moved from Plains, Ga., to the White House. Donnie and Bobby Allison, brothers from Hueytown, Ala., exemplify the fierce and tender loyalties of Southern families. A more amiable group of millionaires would be hard to find--away from their work.

But they are also drivers in the brutal world of big-time stock car racing, and 31 weekends a year, from January to November, they are transformed. Exchanging their designer jeans and Christian Dior shirts for fire-resistant jumpsuits, they climb behind the wheels of souped-up sedans--Chevrolets, Fords, Oldsmobiles---or a Sunday afternoon of racing. And once the gentlemen have started their engines, they often revert to type, crowding each other, even banging fenders, at 170 m.p.h., just as the mythic forebears of their sport dueled with the revenooers on the back roads twisting through the Appalachian Mountains.

Racing wheel to wheel in Darlington, S.C., Darrell Waltrip, 32, nosed out King Petty, 41, by 1.2 sec., in what is turning into the most exciting and richest season on the top circuit of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. For his four hours, twelve minutes and six seconds of work, Waltrip won $23,400. In 1968 the crowd at Darlington numbered some 22,000; this year nearly 68,000 (up 33% from 1978) paid between $10 and $30 a ticket to watch the jousting. Although the sport was born in the South and is still centered there, NASCAR's Grand National circuit, which uses only late-model sedans, visits Brooklyn, Mich., Dover, Del., and Ontario, Calif. Last year more than 1.5 million fans watched the races, and purses rose to $4.8 million, a 50% increase in five years. This season the money will climb to over $5 million. And this year, for the first time, national TV carried an entire race live; CBS covered the Daytona 500 in February and drew 40 million viewers.

The surge of big money has made seven drivers millionaires, and even Neil Bonnett, who finished eighth in earnings last year, totted up $155,875 (which, as is customary, he had to share with the owner of his car). In 1978 Yarborough won a record $530,751, and his total was up to $101,615 after the first eight races this year. In addition to his 50% share of the winnings, Yarborough earns an estimated $250,000 a year from personal appearances, endorsements and royalties from souvenirs bearing his image (T shirts, ashtrays, place mats, coffee mugs). The owner of Yarborough's car is Junior Johnson, one of the roughriding pioneers of the sport, and their sponsors are Busch beer and Citicorp. Campaigning a stock car today costs as much as $1.2 million a year. Yarborough is supported by a 17-man staff, including a pit crew of seven. They not only tune the 560-plus horsepower engine of his Oldsmobile to howling perfection, but perform miracles in the pits. They have changed two tires and filled the gas tank in 12.5 seconds, and have actually replaced an engine in mid-race in less than 13 minutes.

But Yarborough and his rivals still drive as hard as they did years ago on the half-mile clay tracks of the South, which is why they are millionaires today. They put on a spectacular show. In the Daytona 500 last February, Yarborough and Donnie Allison bumped fenders twice, and then crashed. While the national TV audience watched in fascination, the two drivers, joined by Allison's brother Bobby, settled their dispute dirt-track style: with a fistfight. Yarborough and Donnie Allison had another scrape at a later race before they struck a good ole boy truce. Says Yarborough: "Donnie and I talked about the situation, about bird hunting, deer hunting, and the two good coon dogs I got. It's over and done with."

Perhaps. The rules of stock car racing are vaguely drawn to give the competitors a lot of crowd-pleasing leeway, especially on the last lap when, as King Petty says, "you're getting down to pay dirt."

The sport has another undeniable and special appeal. A football fan knows he will never learn what it would be like to quarterback the Pittsburgh Steelers, but a stock car fan gets behind a wheel every day, and his sedan at least looks like those driven by Yarborough, Petty and the Allisons. As a result, the fans have a rare, fierce sense of identification with the heroes of the sport. At Darlington, when Waltrip edged out Petty, the spectators cheered so loudly that the drivers could hear them over the roar of the engines. For the final laps the fans were on their feet, screaming with appreciation at the skill and daring of the men who have so mastered the fundamental art of driving the American automobile.

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