If you’re about my age or younger, Darrell Waltrip comes across as the cheerful good ol’ boy of NASCAR, the grandfatherly figure who was ready to spit in that classic Southern charm that only a boy from Owensboro, Kentucky could provide when they’re amped and ready. He was made a cartoon character, in a Disney/Pixar film, of all things. He’s up and up, he’s the smiling, honest, polite…
Okay, no. Let’s be honest for a minute. Waltrip is smiling and cheerful, for sure. His excitement is genuine. He’s truly a racer to the core. And let’s be honest: racers are very shady in a few ways. You know about the kind of rule-bending that Smokey Yunick was able to do. You might even know about the Penske Camaro that ran Trans-Am in the late 1960s that had a body only marginally thicker than a sheet of paper. Some people might slightly bend the rules. Others will fold them up like origami and do everything they could to not get caught. Waltrip was no stranger to bending rules. He infamously got tagged for running nitrous in 1976, along with A.J. Foyt and Dave Marcis after laying down a blazing qualifying lap for the Daytona 500. But if you think that’s the end of the story, listen to his tales as he talks with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. about what rule-bending really meant back in the day.
nitro, nitrous, whatever….