page_title: Darrell Waltrip
section_title: Owner-driver years: 1991–mid-1998
hierarchical_section_title: Darrell Waltrip / NASCAR career / Owner-driver years: 1991–mid-1998
caption_attribution_description: English: 1994 NASCAR Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Darrell Waltrip during a pit stop.
context_page_description: Darrell Lee Waltrip is an American motorsports analyst, author, former national television broadcaster, and former racing driver. He is also a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and a three-time NASCAR Cup Series runner-up.
  Posting a modern NASCAR series record of 22 top five finishes in 1983 and 21 top five finishes both in 1981 and 1986, Waltrip won 84 NASCAR Cup Series races, including the 1989 Daytona 500, a record five in the Coca-Cola 600, and a track and Series record for any driver at Bristol Motor Speedway with 12. Those victories tie him with Bobby Allison for fourth on the NASCAR's all-time wins list in the Cup Series and place him second to Jeff Gordon for the most wins in NASCAR's modern era. He is ranked second for all-time pole positions with 59, including all-time highs with 35 on short tracks and eight on road courses. Competing in 809 Cup starts over four decades and 29 years, he has scored 271 Top 5s and 390 Top 10s. Winning $19,886,666.00 in posted earnings, he became the first NASCAR driver to be awarded over $10 million in race winnings, more than $26 million in today's currency.
context_section_description: After his fourth season as driver for Hendrick Motorsports, Waltrip formed his own team to field cars in the 1991 NASCAR Winston Cup season. Driving his own cars had been his passion since he successfully drove his own cars in his early NASCAR career in the early and mid-1970s. He would continue his relationship with Chevrolet and drive a Chevrolet Lumina with Western Auto as the primary team sponsor. Waltrip purchased team assets, including the racing facilities, from his former owner Rick Hendrick in Charlotte, North Carolina, and hired long-time friend and crew chief, Jeff Hammond, to oversee the building of race cars and to continue as crew chief. Waltrip and Hammond enjoyed much success together as Hammond had been with Waltrip during the championship winning years with Junior Johnson, and most of the Hendrick Motorsports years, and was Waltrip's crew chief for his 1989 Daytona 500 win and 3 of his 5 Coca-Cola 600 wins.
  In the 1991 season, Waltrip visited victory lane twice, his first win in his second stint as owner-driver coming in only the 7th race of the season on April 21, 1991, in the First Union 400, at North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. His second win of the year came in the 13th race of the season on June 16, 1991, in the Champion Spark Plug 500, at Pocono Raceway, in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.
  Just two races after celebrating his second win of 1991, Waltrip would again be involved in another serious crash, again at the Daytona International Speedway, in Daytona Beach, Florida. It came after completing the 119th of 160 laps on the 2.5-mile superspeedway. Waltrip and driver Alan Kulwicki were racing side by side, leading a large grouping of cars, battling for 5th position. The car drafting Alan Kulwicki bumped the Kulwicki car, causing his car to hit Waltrip's Western Auto Chevrolet at speeds approaching 200 mph on the long backstretch. Waltrip's car slowed and was collected by driver Joe Ruttman's car, both cars sliding sideways several hundred feet on the grassy infield. The tires of Waltrip's car clipped the edge of an access road causing it to become airborne and tumbling end over end several times before coming to a stop, up-side down, in a grassy area near turn 3. Waltrip was extricated and only suffered minor injuries but many feared that he could have re-injured his shattered leg from the crash at the same track the previous year. (Slow-motion video and still photography showed that Waltrip's left arm was outside the car as the car tumbled, and came to rest.) Waltrip still had a plate in his left leg from the compound fractures he suffered in the earlier crash at the Pepsi 400, at the Daytona International Speedway, (Waltrip commented on a January 10, 2013, SPEED Television broadcast of the Daytona NASCAR winter testing, that he had spent more time in the hospital from injuries suffered at the Daytona Speedway, than at any other track he had raced). Waltrip would compete in the following race, the summer race at the Pocono Raceway, in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, but was crashed again when driver Ernie Irvan spun driver Hut Stricklin, in front of almost the entire field. Waltrip won the year's spring race at the track just 5 weeks before.
  Waltrip finished the first year of his second stint as owner-driver 8th in the overall NASCAR Winston Cup points championship, after being as high as 3rd place after 14 races. His first year was generally viewed as a successful first year outing. However, Waltrip was now 44 years old, had children, and had many pressures as owner/driver that he did not concern himself with driving for multimillion-dollar, highly financed race teams, such as Hendrick Motorsports.
  In 1992, Waltrip collected three more wins, including the Mountain Dew Southern 500, a race held at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, United States, September 6, 1992, (the last major race which had eluded his 20-year career), and finished 9th in points, after being as high as 6th after 22 races. That would be Waltrip's 84th, and final NASCAR career victory, tying him wi
caption: Waltrip in the pits during the 1994 Brickyard 400
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