Jarrett took driving success into the broadcast booth

Ned Jarrett won 50 races and several NASCAR championships as a driver but most of today's fans know him more for his sterling work as a television commentator. The Newton, N.C., native grew up on a farm and worked at a sawmill before beginning his racing career as a teenager at Hickory Speedway. A two-time Sportsman champ, Jarrett then moved to NASCAR's premier series and won the first of his two Cup championships in 1961, then repeated the feat four years later. He retired from driving duties a few weeks after turning 34, but turned to broadcasting in an effort to stay active in the sport. One of his most famous calls came in the 1993 Daytona 500, when son Dale held off heavily-favored Dale Earnhardt at the checkered flag.

Q: How did you get started in racing?

Hall of Fame bio

Jarrett had it all -- hard-charging capabilities combined with the consistency essential to stock-car success. The combination produced two Cup Series championships. His 50 career victories are tied for 10th all-time with Junior Johnson. He also won 28 races during the 1964 and '65 seasons.

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Jarrett: When they started building Hickory Speedway, back in the early '50s, it was a big thing in the community. My dad had taken me to a few dirt-track races. There was a country store near where I grew up on a farm and worked at a sawmill, so on a rainy day during construction of that speedway, the workers would be sitting around the store talking and I told them all I'd go up there and show them how to drive. I decided I was going to do that, so I managed to work it out for the first race ever run at Hickory Speedway. I was in it. It started out as something that was just a little weekend fun, not thinking that it would ever turn into a career.

Q: What was your first car?

Jarrett: It was a 1939 Ford coupe. That was a popular car in those days in the Modified and Sportsman divisions of NASCAR. I was running in the Sportsman division. The difference, basically, was that Modified cars could do anything to the engine to make them produce more horsepower and make them run faster, whereas the Sportsman cars were restricted to one carburetor.

Q: You made your Grand National debut driving for Mellie Bernard. Who was he?

Jarrett: Mellie Bernard was an automobile dealer in a little town of Valdese, N.C. I drove a car for him at Darlington in 1955. He took a brand-new Pontiac right off the showroom and raced with it. It didn't run very long, but he brought it back, had the engine overhauled and put it back on the market. That was common in those days.

Q: Was that about the time you started driving full-time?

Jarrett: During that time, I concentrated pretty heavily in the Sportsman division and tried to win the national championship in 1956, 1957 and 1958. In 1956, I finished second to Ralph Earnhardt, Dale's father. In 1957, I did win the championship in the Sportsman series and did it again in 1958. All along then, I'd run a Grand National race every now and then, when the opportunity presented itself. But there were not many opportunities at that point. I didn't really get serious about Grand National racing until the latter part of 1959.

Q: How did the first full-time Cup ride come about?

Jarrett: I was searching around for a car to drive. I thought after winning those two national championships in the Sportsman series that people would come knocking on my door. But it didn't work out that way. I was searching around and found a 1957 Chevrolet -- a guy by the name of R.C. McDaniels from Kannapolis, N.C., owned it. It was a fast car but it wasn't very durable, and I drove it I don't know how many races in 1959 but it wasn't doing my career any good, getting in races and falling out. One night in late July 1959, I went to Greenville, S.C., to a race and drove that car. We ran good but dropped out of the race. My brother had a friend with him who came down from Newton, N.C. And on the way back, I told him my career was going downhill and I needed to do something different.

He told me there was a 1957 Ford that was being maintained by a former mechanic who helped me win the Sportsman championship. Junior Johnson had been driving that car and they were building him a new Dodge to run in the Southern 500 and were willing to sell the Ford. They wanted $2,000 for it. There was a race down in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Saturday night, a 100-mile race that paid $950 to win, and another race at Charlotte at the fairground tracks on Sunday afternoon, which also paid $950. (Continued)