David Pearson will be enshrined into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on May 23. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

To say he performed admirably is to understate the case. Pearson led 225 of the 400 laps in the Fox-prepared Pontiac and built such an impressive lead that he was able to drive the final few laps with a punctured tire and still win by two laps over Fireball Roberts, then one of the sport’s giants.

Pearson would call his first win the most important of his career. It proved he could race with the big boys. It proved that to everyone else, that is. Pearson had no problem believing he could do it.

“I figured the car didn’t know who was driving it,” he said. “I thought I could do it as good as anybody else.

“That’s the biggest race I think about. I never had won a big race. That was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.”

Pearson followed up that victory with big-track wins at Daytona and Atlanta that season, and the career of the man who would become known as the Silver Fox was solidly in gear.

He raced with – and outran – the best of the best. Pearson’s duels with Richard Petty often were titanic battles as they ruled the circuit’s big tracks in the 1970s. Pearson and Petty finished one-two 63 times (the last occurrence was in 1977), with Pearson leading that count at 33-30.

Pearson won championships while driving for Owens in 1966 and Holman-Moody in 1968 and 1969. His true glory years came later, however, after some observers figured his career had begun a downward spin. He hooked up with the Wood Brothers team in 1972, and the following years were something close to magical.

In 1973, Pearson and the Woods won 11 of 18 superspeedway races, a remarkable performance on big tracks.

Despite his superspeedway success, however, Pearson had not won his sport’s biggest race, the Daytona 500. He changed that – and in a huge way – in 1976.

As happened so many other times during that period, the battle for the race win came down to Pearson and Petty, and ABC was televising this one to the nation. They raced each other in the first and second positions as the race reached its twilight laps. On the final spin around the Daytona track, Pearson passed Petty for the lead on the backstretch, but Petty stormed back in turn three, and they reached turn four for the final time side by side.

Then Petty’s car moved slightly up the track and hit the left rear of Pearson’s car, causing both cars to slide and spin. Both hit the outside wall and dropped onto the grass adjacent to the frontstretch.

Petty’s mangled car stalled, but Pearson had kept his clutch depressed as he rolled to a stop, keeping his engine alive. Although his car also was smashed, he was able to return to the track and chug under the checkered flag at about 30 miles per hour.

It was an electric finish, and it cemented Pearson as one of the leading drivers of all time.

Two years earlier, in the Firecracker 400 at Daytona, Pearson had beaten Petty on the final lap with what has been ranked as one of the slickest moves in the sport’s history. The “slingshot” move was in full flower in those years, and it was relatively easy for the second-place driver to use the maneuver on the final lap to whip around the first-place driver and win the race. Pearson was first on the white-flag lap, however, and that was a spot he didn’t prefer.

Going down the backstretch, Pearson faked a blown engine, dropped to the inside of the track and left the lead to Petty. Pearson then returned to full speed and used the slingshot to beat Petty to the finish.

Petty was not happy, later saying that Pearson’s move was too dangerous. Pearson said his long-time nemesis simply was upset about losing.

The rift between the two drivers healed quickly, and they remain close friends.

The long and successful partnership between Pearson and the Woods ended in 1979 when miscommunication during the Rebel 400 at Darlington Raceway resulted in Pearson leaving his pit early without all four new tires being placed on the car. He crashed at the end of pit road when two of the wheels came off.

Pearson and the Woods split up the following week, but he and team owner Glen Wood and crew chief Leonard Wood soon put those troubles behind them, even as they moved to new team situations. Leonard Wood, whose style of preparing cars seemed to perfectly fit Pearson, is scheduled to give Pearson’s induction speech next week.

Although leaving the Woods, Pearson would win again, but his career began a slow decline in the 1980s, and he decided to quit driving in 1986 after battling continuing back problems.

In addition to being remembered as a king of the superspeedways, Pearson is regarded as one of the smartest drivers ever to sit on a starting grid. He seldom battled tooth-and-nail at the front but instead saved his equipment for late in races. The Woods’ team was known for improving the performance of its cars as races progressed.

“We changed the wedge and stuff in the car by changing tire pressure a long time before anybody else started doing that,” Pearson said. “The Woods were that smart. They’d change the wedge during the race, and nobody would ever know they’d done it.”

Bobby Allison, who will ride into the Hall of Fame with Pearson, said he learned from Pearson’s tactics.

“Pearson would not race you during the race,” Allison said. “Pearson saved his car for the end and then had a nice fresh car and could blow by the other guys who had been out there rubbing fenders with each other.

David Pearson won 105 races in NASCAR's top division. (Photo: Getty Images)

“Way late in my career, I finally started catching onto that. I feel like that helped me a little, taking the David Pearson attitude and saving that car for when it really did count.”

Although Pearson certainly was a popular driver with a considerable fan base (he still receives mail weekly at his home asking for autographs), he was never in Petty’s neighborhood in that category.

“I used to hide from talking to people [in the media], and I’m sure that hurt me in the long run,” Pearson said. “That’s the only thing I’d do different. I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it. To start with, I was a little bashful and was afraid I’d say the wrong thing. A little ol’ mill-hill boy goes to the race, and all those news people come scattering around you, you don’t know what to say or do.”

Instead, as Pearson said, he let his driving do the talking.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.