Jarrett won 13 races and logged 44 top-10 results en route to the 1965 Cup Series championship while driving for Long. It was also the year of his biggest victory, the 1965 Southern 500. Jarrett won despite shutting his engine off in the turns during the closing laps of the 367-lap race in an attempt to cool the power plant.
“I always wanted to win the Southern 500 at Darlington, not the Daytona 500,” Jarrett said. “In 1965, we put it all together. Everybody in the field had trouble with their cars overheating. I finally wound up winning by 14 laps and that still stands as the largest margin of victory. That was one of the goals that I set for myself and managed to do it.
“I had a huge lead. The people from Ford had moved down to my pit. They were there representing all of the Ford drivers. I was the only one left,” Jarrett recalled. “We didn’t have two-way radios then, only sign boards. They were trying to get me to pit because my car was overheating. I knew my car was overheating. I could look at the temperature gauge and see that.”
Jarrett found a second career after he stepped away from driving. In the early 1960s, he began a radio program on WNNC in Newton, N.C., and also worked with the Universal Racing Network when he hung up his helmet in October 1966. Then in 1978, he became a broadcaster with MRN Radio. In addition to his work on race broadcasts, Jarrett hosted a daily program on MRN Radio called “Ned Jarrett’s World of Racing” until May 15, 2009.
Eventually, Jarrett’s focus turned to television with CBS and ESPN. He called his son Dale Jarrett’s first Cup Series victory in the 1991 Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan Int’l Speedway and his 1993 Daytona 500 triumph.
“To have such a rewarding broadcast career really meant a great deal to me,” Jarrett said. “It was a big challenge. I grew up in the country. To one day be working on the broadcast of the Daytona 500 or the Southern 500 was very fulfilling to be able to be asked to do it. Broadcasting was just as fulfilling to me as driving race cars and winning championships.”
Jeff Burton, the winner of 21 Cup Series races, is now a commentator for NBC Sports. He has learned many lessons from Jarrett about professionalism behind the microphone.
“He did TV the right way,” Burton said. “He showed excitement, but he was respectful. He is someone that I’ve always looked up to. He’s a champion, won races and went on and had a major impact. As a father that broadcasts with a son on the track with Harrison, I have 100 percent looked at how he did it.
“I looked at the one time they pushed him out of his comfort zone at the Daytona 500 (in 1993) when he made the famous call when Dale Jarrett won the race and said, ‘Hey, go do it.’ Other than that, you had no idea his kid was on the race track. He would mention it, but he called it like he saw it. For a guy that’s doing that, I say, ‘How did he do that?’ I never talked to him about it. I just watched old races. He just did it the right way. So for me, that’s a major impact on how I try to handle that … is to pay attention to how he did it.”
Jarrett also served as a longtime track promoter of Hickory Motor Speedway where his career started 72 years ago.
In 2011, the two-time Cup Series champion was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
“I didn’t expect to be one of the early ones to go into the NASCAR Hall of Fame,” Jarrett said. “It’s very fulfilling to get that honor after the years I’ve spent in the sport in various situations. I honestly didn’t think I’ve done enough to have been inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. I’m humbled and honored to be in there for sure.”
This story appeared in the July 12, 2023 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
