Cale Yarborough, NASCAR legend and South Carolinian, has died

Cale Yarborough, a South Carolina native and one of NASCAR’s top drivers of all time, died Sunday at the age of 84.

Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass was the first to report the news.

Yaborough had been in bad health over the last few years and was battling a rare genetic disorder, according to his family.

Yarborough won 83 races during his NASCAR career and was elected to the sport’s Hall of Fame in January of 2012. His 83 wins are tied for fourth all-time. He was the first driver to win three Cup Series championships from 1976-1978.

Yarborough won the Daytona 500 four times (1968, 1977, 1983-1984), second only to Richard Petty’s seven. He was a member of NASCAR’s greatest 50 drivers, released in 1998.

Yarborough was especially fond of Darlington Raceway and held it in reverence when talking about it and the importance of his racing career. His first race was there in the 1957 Southern 500 and he won there five times.

Yarborough grew up a few miles away from the track in the small town of Sardis, just outside of Timmonsville. He tells the story of how he sneaked under the fence to get into a race at Darlington, and he made his stock car debut at the Lady in Black in 1957. In 1965, he wasn’t sneaking under the fence but going over one after making contact with Sam McQuagg’s car in the Southern 500. Yarborough, known for his toughness and grit during his racing career, and his car ended up in the parking lot next to a telephone pole outside of the track. Tired of waiting for an ambulance, he proceeded to walk back up to the track.

“My car never touched the guard rail and it was destroyed,” Yarborough told The State back in 2015.. “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. “I have been under the fence, over the fence, on top of the fence and tried to knock every fence down there.”