Lee roy yarbrough biography of donald
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LeeRoy Yarbrough
American racing driver (1938–1984)
NASCAR driver
Lonnie "LeeRoy" Yarbrough (September 17, 1938 – December 7, 1984) was an American stock car racer. His best season was 1969 when he won seven races, tallied 21 finishes in the top-ten and earned $193,211 ($1,407,350.77 when inflation is taken into account). During his entire career from 1960–1972, he competed in 198 races, scoring fourteen wins, 65 finishes in the top-five, 92 finishes in the top-ten, and ten pole positions. Yarbrough also competed in open-wheel racing, making 5 starts in the USAC Championship cars, including 3 Indianapolis 500s, with a best finish of 3rd at Trenton Speedway in 1970. His racing number was 98. When asked about his passion, Yarbrough described racing as "what I call my life."
Yarbrough was admitted to a mental institution on March 7, 1980, after trying to kill his mother by strangulation.[1][2] All attempts to rehabilitate him (both in Florida or in Nort
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Lee Roy Yarbrough decided when he was a small boy in Jacksonville, Florida, that one day he would race cars. At fourteen in 1952 he lied about his age to obtain a licence and left school to race self-built machines on dirt tracks. It was obvious from his successes there that he would graduate to become one of the United States' top motor sportsmen.
The Atlanta 500
Such was his fame and total domination that race promoters offered $500 to anyone that could beat him and he also ran in utmaning events at night. In 1960 he took part in his first NASCAR Grand National race, finishing a lowly 33rd in the Atlanta 500. Two seasons later he raced exclusively in NASCAR-sanctioned races, running in the Sportsman class as well as the premier Grand National category.
One of his first major victories was at Daytona International Speedway where he won the Permatex 250. Successes began in Grand National contests in 1964 when he gained two victories and won $15,155; in thirteen
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One thing that NASCAR has sold over the years is its sense of history.
One needn’t follow the sport for long before catching mentions of Bill France scribbling the foundations of NASCAR on a napkin at the Starlight Motel, or how every driver had some background in moonshining, or that Tim Flock sat in the passenger seat as his rhesus monkey Jocko Flocko earned the win for them at Hickory Motor Speedway.
But with like all things tapping into history, there tend to be some errors that emerge in the sacrifice of a good story. (Jocko rode along for the final 27 laps when they won on May 16, 1953. Kidding.)
As time has gone by, stories proliferate about the sport regarding the good ol’ days, yet no one ever seems to clarify what made them so good nor when exactly they were. When Mark Martin once said that they would race with carburetors that had fallen off cars laying on the track – caution be damned. This type of bravado highlights the typical hyper-masculinity that ofte