by Lynette Alice

Created on: August 05, 2008   Last Updated: November 24, 2008

NASCAR driver, team owner, and businessman are all adjectives applied to a man that sped to number five on the all-time wins list, William Caleb Yarborough. If you are like me and first got your taste of NASCAR and racing in general back in the seventies, you simply knew him as Cale or the man in the car whose sponsor seemed to change every year. If you came along years later you may know him as the team owner that hired Dale Jarret or Dick Trickle to try to bring home victories. Regardless of how you were introduced to him, his name is synonymous with excellence.

Cale was seemingly born to race, entering the world in the shadow of Darlington Raceway on the twenty seventh day of March in 1940. Cale was the son of a tobacco farmer in the town of Timmonsville South Carolina which was known as little more than a fuel stop on the way to anywhere else. Cale identified and began pursuing his dream at the age of eleven when he attended his first race which was the 1951 Southern 500. He seemed determined to break into racing without delay as was evidenced by his eviction from the first race he tried to enter for lying about his age. Undaunted Cale pressed on and in 1957 he debuted in Bob Weatherly's number thirty Pontiac at the event that first inspired him, the Southern 500. Things didn't go well as he began the race in the forty fourth position and finished in forty second. Two years later Weatherly gave the still young Yarborough another shot and he improved to finish in twenty seventh, not setting the world on fire, but certainly enough to merit a bit of attention.

It wasn't until 1960 that Cale took his first top fifteen finish by coming in fourteenth at the Southern States Fairgrounds, but 1962 was his breakout year of sorts. Cale finally finished in the top ten at the Daytona 500 Qualifying Race. Now Yarborough had finally gotten the attention of the collective racing world and continued to spread his name with a final standings position of fiftieth place. He wasn't a household name yet, but back in Timmonsville he was already a true to life hometown hero.

From 1963 until the start of the 1966 season Cale was going through the growing pains of the racing world. He began the 1963 campaign without a full time ride, a problem that would plague him briefly. Herman Beam finally gave him a chance to pilot the number nineteen Ford in which he took a pair of fifth place finishes which was enough to earn a return call for the 1964 season. After a few races however he

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