Yates leads new class into Hall of Fame
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Robert Yates still remembers his college professor telling him he’d never make anything of himself.
It turns out his professor was wrong.
Yates’ 40-year career in auto racing culminated with his selection to the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Wednesday, an achievement that left him in tears. The 74-year-old Yates — an overwhelming favorite who was selected by 94 percent of the voters — admitted he wasn’t the smartest guy, but said “I knew how to work on cars.”
Yates, a NASCAR Cup Series season champion as both an engine builder and owner, is joined in the Hall of Fame’s newest class by three-time championship crew chief Ray Evernham, drivers Red Byron and Ron Hornaday Jr. and broadcaster Ken Squier. Hornaday and driver Alan Kulwicki tied for the fifth and final spot, and Hornaday won the tiebreaker.
The induction ceremony is set for January in Charlotte, Yates’ hometown.
Growing up, Yates couldn’t play baseball and football because of a heart murmur.
“So I worked on engines,” he said.
While his passion was building engines, he achieved most of his fame as an owner, with his drivers winning 57 Cup Series races.
After providing the power behind Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough with his engines, he started his own racing team in the late 1980s. Success came quickly, with Davey Allison winning the Daytona 500 and finishing third in the standings in 1992. Later, Dale Jarrett won two Daytona 500s and a Cup Series
championship for Robert Yates Racing.
Yates is battling liver cancer, but he said being selected for the Hall of Fame left him feeling like grabbing a jack, jumping over a pit wall and changing a tire.
“I may not sleep a wink,” he said with a wide smile.
NASCAR vice chairman Mike Helton said Yates could do it all and is popular in the garage: “Having watched him from an engine builder to a crew chief to a car owner and a tutor to so many families in the sport, the contributions he has made to NASCAR — we will never be able to count them all.”
Evernham became synonymous with Jeff Gordon when they began working together in 1992. He guided Gordon and the Rainbow Warriors to Cup Series titles in 1995, ’96 and ’98. Under Evernham, the No. 24 pit crew excelled on pit stops, becoming the envy of other NASCAR teams as it dominated the 1990s by winning a series-leading 47 races.
Evernham was having dinner with his wife in Indianapolis when he learned of the news.
“My wife got a really big smile on her face, and she said, ‘You’re in,’” Evernham said. “The emotions overwhelmed me, and I have been at a loss of words since. I have never felt as overrun by emotions in my life. … This is the biggest thing that can happen in your career.”
Byron won NASCAR’s first race in 1948 on the Daytona beach-and-road course and went on to win the stock-car racing body’s first championship. Wounded in World War II, he drove with a special brace on his pedal.
Squier, who became the definitive voice of NASCAR, called Byron “an American hero.”
“After he got shot up so bad in the war,” Squier related, “they wanted to take his leg off and he said, ‘Thank you, I’ll keep it.’”
Seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson and 2014 champion Kevin Harvick were among the many young drivers who credit Hornaday for helping them get their start in NASCAR. Hornaday let a number of drivers, including Johnson and Harvick, sleep on a couch at his Charlotte-area home while they were getting started in the sport.
“We moved, and the only thing I saved was that couch,” said Hornaday, who has won four Trucks Series championships during his career. “People say ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘Because everybody was always too drunk to go upstairs, and they would always pass out on that little couch, the closest one to the door.’”
Jim France, the current chairman of International Speedway Corporation and a son of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., won the Landmark Award for his contributions to the sport.