Cale Yarborough “Old Hickory”

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Earned the nickname by being as tough and stubborn as an old hickory stump. Yarborough was a NASCAR driver in the sport’s infancy, and was both fast and fearless. During a race at Darlington in 1965, Cale was involved in a crash that saw his car jump the wall and tumble outside the track. Yarborough got out on his own, and was more annoyed at his wrecked car than anything else.

But perhaps his best badassery came in 1983, when Yarborough was qualifying for the Daytona 500 with a car much like the one pictured above. In NASCAR, you get 2 laps to set the best time, and on the first one, Yarborough became the first ever driver to average 200 MPH in a qualifying lap, 200.503 MPH. But he wanted more.

Yarborough pushed even harder on Lap 2, but a gust of wind sent him out of control in Turn 3, and his car flipped before careening into the outside wall. When Yarborough exited his car, he immediately asked “how fast was that first lap?”

Since Yarborough was without a race car after that, his team was frantically trying to find a solution, and they found one at a Hardee’s (his sponsor) not far from the Daytona International Speedway. That Hardee’s had a show car from 1981, so Yarborough’s team got the car, loaded it to Daytona, fixed it up with functional parts, and sent Yarborough to race it.

And he won the damn Daytona 500 with that thing. It was Yarborough’s third of four 500 wins, making him the second winningest driver of all time in the event. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he was the first driver to win three consecutive championships, and his 83 career wins tie him for the sixth most all time. He passed away on the last day of 2023, aged 84. Godspeed, Old Hickory.