One of the coolest things about old racing video is being able to see and kind of experience things in the moment and scene that they happened. It is one thing to see still photos of stuff but when you can see movement, color, what people were saying, how they dressed, and how they acted it is cooler. This video features a very scary Cale Yarborough wreck from Darlington in 1965. He literally gets launched out of the track, over the wall, and down an embankment. The guy nearly ends up in the parking lot.
The wreck is not the story here though. The interview done by Chris Economaki just after the crash is flipping awesome because of a quote Yarborough drops about astronauts and then there’s another interview, likely done in the 1980s or early 1990s where he relives the moment with even more candor and laugh as he remembers it. During that piece he is surrounded by Darryl Waltrip, Richard Petty and Benny Parsons who all seem to revel in the story.
The cars in the actual racing clip are awesome, the scenes of the crew waiting to hear if he is OK by listening to a transistor radio for the announcer’ word are great and the way they alert everyone to his being in one piece is also old school and classic as well.
Cale Yarborough had one hell of a career. He also had one hell of a bad day in Darlington back in 1965 and he is going to tell you about it in his own words here –
