NASCAR Hall of Famer Ned Jarrett Dies at 93

Ned Jarrett died this week at age 93. The native of Newton, North Carolina won two NASCAR Cup series championships and later worked as a radio and television broadcaster. Jarrett began racing as a hobby.

He won his first racecar in a poker game and competed in the lower-tier Sportsman series before moving to the Cup series. To obtain equipment, he purchased a race car, truck, trailer, pit equipment, and two mechanics from a team that had built the car for Junior Johnson for a total of $2000 plus an extra set of tires.

“I went down to the shop the next Saturday morning, said I’ll write a check for it,” Jarrett said during his 2011 NASCAR Hall of Fame induction press conference.

“I said, When the bank closes Friday, I'll write them a check, take off to Myrtle Beach, there was a hundred-mile race, pays $950 to win. There was another race on Sunday afternoon in Charlotte, that pays $950 to win. That's $1900.

I can cover that check on Monday morning. You can't be foolish enough to try that, but I did... I was cocky enough to believe if Junior Johnson could win races in that car, I could, too. I did that. Bargained for not only the car, but also I got the truck and trailer they hauled it on, got the pit equipment and their two mechanics to go with me that weekend all for $2,000 and an extra set of tires.

Jarrett scored 50 wins in the NASCAR Cup series and 51 if counting a 1959 win in the convertible series. He won his first Cup championship in 1961 and his second in 1965. In the 1965 season he won 13 of 54 races and scored 45 top-10 finishes.

All of his 1965 victories came on short tracks except for the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, where he won by 14 laps ahead of the rest of the field, a margin that remains a record. Jarrett broke his back in a crash at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in 1965. He retired from racing at age 32 in 1966.