Yates posthumously inducted

CHARLOTTE, N.C. » Robert Yates lived long enough to hear his name announced as a NASCAR Hall of Famer.

Although he lost his battle with liver cancer five months after he was voted into the Hall, Yates was able to write his own acceptance speech for Friday night’s ceremony. It was read by Dale Jarrett, a Hall of Famer who won the 1999 championship driving for Yates.

“When I started in racing, this was not the goal,” Jarrett read from Yates’ speech. “All I wanted to do throughout my career was win races. I would always say, I don’t race for the money, I race to win. For me, that’s what it’s always been about, but to be part of this year’s induction class is a true honor.”

Yates was a championship-winning car owner and engine builder who learned from Waddell Wilson and Junior Johnson. He built the powerplants for Bobby Allison’s 1983 Cup championship team, and the engines used when Richard Petty drove to his 199th and 200th victories — his last — of Petty’s career.

As a car owner, Yates drivers won 57 races that included three Daytona 500s. A year ago, as he was in his losing fight with cancer, Kurt Busch drove a Yatespowered car to the Daytona 500 title.

Also inducted Friday night were pioneering crew chief Ray Evernham, Red Byron, NASCAR’s first champion, four-time Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday Jr. and Ken Squier, the first broadcaster to make the Hall.

Evernham led Jeff Gordon to three of his four championships and changed the sport in his approach to preparing race cars. He pushed limits through innovation, engineering and formed Gordon’s “Rainbow Warriors” pit crew that was the best in NASCAR.

“It was 1995, we win the championship in Atlanta, it wasn’t the best of days, we didn’t perform very well,” Gordon recalled. “But we did win the championship. And to tell you what kind of person Ray Evernham was, I think he enjoyed that championship for maybe a splitsecond before he started thinking about what was wrong with that race car, and he showed up at the shop the next morning, the day after we won that championship, to figure out what was wrong with that race car. And he found it.”