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40 years later, ‘The Fight’ still makes NASCAR go

The Allisons-Yarborough Daytona 500 feud propelled the sport
 
Bobby Allison, left, stands over Cale Yarborough after a collision between Yarborough and Bobbie's brother Donnie on the last lap of the 1979 Daytona 500 auto race. Donnie, who led the race until the collision with Yarborough, said Yarborough, "was a gorilla and he raced like one, 100 percent all of the time." The 1979 race was instrumental in broadening NASCAR's southern roots. Forty years later, it still resonates as one of the most important days in NASCAR history. [AP Photo/Ric Feld]
Bobby Allison, left, stands over Cale Yarborough after a collision between Yarborough and Bobbie's brother Donnie on the last lap of the 1979 Daytona 500 auto race. Donnie, who led the race until the collision with Yarborough, said Yarborough, "was a gorilla and he raced like one, 100 percent all of the time." The 1979 race was instrumental in broadening NASCAR's southern roots. Forty years later, it still resonates as one of the most important days in NASCAR history. [AP Photo/Ric Feld]
Published Feb. 16, 2019|Updated Feb. 16, 2019

DAYTONA BEACH – It was 40 years ago, a damn long time.

The East Coast was sagging under snowstorms. There were still just a handful of shows on television. What else was there to do? So, CBS was running some 500-mile car race, nationally, start to finish, flag to flag, a first. No one knew what they were thinking.

And then it happened.

A bright, blinding light.

With blood running down its chin.

The Fight.

On tiny screens across the country, race car drivers climbed from wrecked cars in Turn 3 at Daytona International Speedway on the final lap of the Daytona 500, swinging helmets, throwing punches.

And the country noticed. The music began.

Who are these guys?

They were the Allisons, Bobby and Donnie, out of Alabama, and Cale Yarborough, a bantam rooster from South Carolina . These were the hard-charging boys of NASCAR, there for everyone to see.

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“It was quite the deal,” Bobby Allison said.

“It changed the whole thing,” Cale Yarborough said.

The Fight was the day that NASCAR went big time. It was the day it passed from the sporting backwater to front and center, not just a Southern thing, not just moonshining rednecks.

“It’s interesting that our signature moment was a fight,” NASCAR historian Buz McKim said. “But there it is. It was stubborn diehards. They weren’t going to let each other win. I think a lot of folks didn’t understand that before that day. People thought it was just cars going around and around. That’s what my wife said. That’s why she’s my ex-wife.”

“It changed the complexion of NASCAR,” Donnie Allsion said. “People realized after that wreck and that fight that we were serious as those other sports.”

“We weren’t a bunch of actors,” his brother Bobby said. “It proved we were real people, the real deal. They could use a little of that today.”

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The Fight lives on, a signature NASCAR moment. Replicas of the wrecked cars from that day are in the Daytona Fan Zone this weekend, parents telling the story to their kids. The Fight isn’t lost on today’s racers. They see the photos, they see the replays, which NASCAR uses to this day, even as it gets all corporate. Blood and dirt. The Fight still matters.

“It was one of the high points of NASCAR,” said racing legend Richard Petty, who that day, from nowhere, passed the wreck and The Fight to win his sixth Daytona 500. “It put NASCAR on the nationwide map. People thought racing was a Southern sport deal, and they saw the rednecks come out there at the end. It was the perfect storm, the snowstorm, everybody watching, how the race ended. It couldn’t have been a better footstep for NASCAR.”

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It couldn’t have had a better cast of characters. You had Yarborough, who would win the Daytona 500 four times and who in 1979 was three-time defending series champion. You had Bobby Allison, who would win the 500 three time and be a series champion. And you had his younger brother, Donnie, a hard charger who’d had some bad luck at the 500, coming up short three times before the ’79 500.

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“In ’70, I wrecked on a caution flag,” 79-year-old Donnie Allison said while sitting in a Daytona Beach restaurant this week before an autograph session. “In ’69, I had a lap on the field at 105 laps and broke a push rod. In ’74, Richard (Petty) and I ran together, but I didn’t win.”

Then came Feb. 18, 1979. Daytona was the second race of the season then, and it didn’t look like it was going to get run.

“There was a storm that woke me up in the middle of the night,” Donnie said. “I was staying at the beach. It looked like the ocean had turned upside down, it was raining that hard. But we go to the race track and we get it dried out. All up the whole Eastern seaboard, it’s snowed in. We didn’t have no hundred channels in 1979. You didn’t have no choices. So people turned us on. And it was a hell of a race.

“We were lucky we ran. But I always said [NASCAR president] Bill France Sr., he must have a seat right next to the guy in the seat upstairs, because it always worked out. This was Big Bill France. He had a connection upstairs. Big Bill said, ‘We’re not here to race, we’re here to put on a show.’ And we did that day.”

And then it got better.

Donnie Allison was leading Yarborough down the Daytona backstretch on the final lap. The stories vary from there, still.

“Cale hit me in the back,” Donnie said.

“I had Donnie beat,” Yarborough said. “I made up four laps on him during that race. All you have to do is look at the film. He just ran me off the race track.”

“He was a gorilla and he raced like one, 100 percent all of the time,” Donnie said.

Donnie Allison, in car 1, and Cale Yarborough, in car 11, crash on the last lap of the 1979 Daytona 500. The wreck and the fight that followed is considered a seminal moment in NASCAR history. [AP Photo]

The cars came together, went sideways, climbed up the track in Turn 3, hit the wall, then slid back down.

“We were both sitting in the dirt,” Donnie said.

Bobby Allison, who’d been in a wreck with Yarborough earlier in the race, was running 11th when he drove by before finishing the race. But he came back around to see how his brother was. The 5-foot-7 Yarborough approached the brothers Allison.

“I could see Donnie getting out of his car,” Bobby said at a Daytona Beach hotel while he signed autographs. “Do you want a ride? Cale started yelling that the wreck was my fault. I think I questioned his ancestry. So Cale comes hustling over. He had his helmet in his hand. Never thought he’d do anything but yell some more. I was still in the car. He hits me with his helmet. He cut my nose and my lip. Blood started dripping in my lap. I said I got to get out and handle this right now or run from him the rest of my life.”

“It was the most unfair fight ever,” Yarborough laughed by phone from South Carolina. “There wasn’t but two of them.”

“He took to beating on my fist with his nose,” Bobby said with a chuckle.

Yarborough tried kicking Bobby Allison, who put him on the ground. Brother Donnie never threw a punch. It was stunning.

“Because I was the fighter in the family,” Donnie said. "I wasn’t afraid to fight anybody. I’ll be 80 years old in November and I’m still not afraid to fight anybody. When we got to the garage, my mother, Kitty, is having a hissy fit. She could not believe it was Bobby fighting, not me. Cale was lucky. If I’d ever hit him, I might have killed him.”

Instead, Donnie grabbed Cale’s arm and kept trying to tell his brother to stop.

“We’re on national TV, we’re on national TV.”

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And they were. CBS even used an overhead shot of the fight from the blimp. Race announcer Ken Squier’s voice rose.

“There’s a fight between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison!"

Cale Yarborough, right, kicks and pushes Bobby Allison, center, who is catching his leg as brother Donnie, left, tries to pull his brother free from the fight which started after Yarborough collided with Donnie on the last lap of the 1979 Daytona 500. More than 10 million people watched the race, propelling NASCAR to new heights of popularity. [AP Photo/Ric Feld]

And America was watching.

The Allisons and Yarborough were each fined $6,000 for The Fight, though Donnie Allison and Yarborough later got some of the money back for good behavior. Not Bobby Allison.

“I never got my money back,” Bobby said. “I always say that NASCAR used the money to make all those commercials of the fight that it still uses. They’ve made billions off that fight. I haven’t seen a penny.”

“It was a different time,” Yarborough said. “I don’t know what these guys would do today. The sport today might could use some of that.

"It ain’t what it used to be.”

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One more thing about the Allison and Yarborough.

“We were friends then and we’re friends ever since,” Yarborough said.

The 1979 Daytona 500 garnered a 10.5 rating for CBS, equivalent to 10 million homes, 10 million homes left talking about those guys in the race cars.

NASCAR is making a fuss over The Fight’s 40th anniversary this weekend, but Cale Yarborough, 79, can’t make it to Daytona. A bad knee and recent back surgery have him laying low.

“I wish I could be there,” Yarborough said. “If they re-enact the fight, if you get a chance, throw one for me.”

Bobby Allison is 81, with a big head of silver hair. He has lived through a 1988 crash at Pocono that nearly killed him. He lost two auto racing sons to accidents within a year. Clifford died on the track in a 1992 crash at the Michigan International Speedway. Davey perished in a helicopter crash 11 months later at Talladega.

These days Bobby shuffles more than he walks and his memory slips.

But The Fight lives on. When Bobby Allison arrived at the restaurant to sign, there was a fan waiting for him, Bob Henn, a retiree from Detroit who winters in Hernando County.

“Mr. Allison, can I get a picture?”

Henn smiled and then shook Allison’s right hand.

“Is this the fist that threw those punches?” Henn asked.

“That’s the one,” Allison said with a faraway look and soft smile.

Quite the deal.

Contact Martin Fennelly at mfennelly@tampabay.com or (813) 731-8029. Follow @mjfennelly