Printable Biography of Darrell Waltrip

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Starting his driving career in go-karts at age 12, Darrell Waltrip entered his first stock car race just four short years later. Waltrip and his father built a 1936 Chevrolet coupe and headed to a local dirt track near their Owensboro, Ky., home. The first night out was far from a success as the youngster, barely old enough to drive on the street, slammed the wall and heavily damaged the coupe. Waltrip soon left the dirt and found his niche on pavement where the smoothness he learned in the karts proved a valuable asset. His racing activities continued to increase and by the late 1960s Darrell Waltrip had become a regular at the fairgrounds track in Nashville, Tenn.

Darrell Waltrip quickly developed into one of the nation’s top short-track drivers and made his first NASCAR Winston Cup start in 1972 at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. He continued to make sporadic NASCAR starts while earning a living as a barnstorming short-track racer. Finally in 1975, Waltrip decided it was time to become a full-time NASCAR Winston Cup competitor.
He recalled: “Wherever I would go, I was almost assured I was going to win one or two races a week and I made a good living doing that. It was difficult to step to the big leagues and be just another fish in a big pond. So it took some time for me to make up my mind that I needed to get in there, give it 100 percent and make my mark.”