LeeRoy Yarbrough, no kin to Cale Yarborough, was THE man on Superspeedways in 1969. He won both races at Daytona, both at Darlington, the World 600 at Charlotte, the Dixie 500 at Atlanta and the American 500 at Rockingham. When it came to racing the superspeedways no one was as consistently good as LeeRoy and it would be until 1985 that Bill Elliott would be as prolific.
LeeRoy was best remembered for running Mercury Cyclones for car owner Junior Johnson with Herb Nab as his crew chief. The white Mercs with red number 98's and occasionally sporting a flat black hood, were beautiful in the understated look. A look that was so typical of the 60's and early 70's.
In many ways only being able to see snippets of races on ABC's WWoS made many of these drivers, bigger than life. LeeRoy never came close to winning a championship in NASCAR and he was pretty much out of the sport when Winston started pouring money into the sport, but he did set a record in 1969 with over $185,000 in winnings. Compared to Kevin Harvick's cool mil for winning one ALL-Star race, it seems like chicken feed.
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