Cale Yarborough’s Former Crew Chief on How the Infamous 1979 Daytona 500’s Iconic Finish Came to Be

The Daytona 500 is known for a lot of controversial moments but perhaps one of the most controversial ones was the 1979 edition of The Great American Race. Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison battled for the win but with a couple of laps remaining, they wrecked each other.

The two drivers got into a fistfight after the event which became one of the most infamous Daytona 500 moments. But what were the circumstances leading up to the crash? Yarborough’s then-crew chief Travis Carter spoke with Dale Earnhardt Jr. about the infamous finish.

Yarborough had not had a good race until that point. His car spun on just the fourth lap of the race since the track wasn’t dry. He found himself three laps behind and had to make some changes. After adjustments were made in the pits, he came out much faster and closed the gap to the lead with two laps remaining. That’s when it happened.  The funny part is that Yarborough and Allison did not crash except for that fourth lap incident when the track was slightly wet.

“He was the slowest car on the race track at one point,” Carter said on Junior’s podcast. “But the cautions were falling…people crash more on a good surface typically than they do on a slick surface. When they really get grip is when they wreck a lot and they were doing that pretty regularly.”

Allison still not over ’79 Daytona loss

Donnie Allison still is not happy about how things turned out that day. He was in the lead of the race with two laps remaining and attempted to block the pass. Yarborough seemed to lose control after that and rammed straight into his rival’s car. Some believe that it was a mistake, but Allison remains convinced that it was his moment that Yarborough snatched away.

“No, he kept me from winning the Daytona 500 really for the third time. I should have won it. I’m sitting in infield wrecked in turn four three-quarter miles from the finish line,” he had said earlier. His brother Bobby had come into the picture and there were allegations that the Allisons had ganged up on Yarborough. This was denied by Donnie some months ago. 

Yarbrough passed away late in 2023 and will be remembered as one of the greatest race car drivers of all time. Despite it being infamous, the 1979 Daytona 500 remains as an important part of the event’s lore. It just proves just how far drivers are willing to go to win one of the biggest races in American motorsports.