“Our crew’s yelling, ‘Hey – there’s a fight down in Turn Four!’” - Jeff Hammond, two-time NASCAR Cup Series championship crew chief who now serves as a SPEED and FOX Sports analyst. (Photo: SPEED)
HAMMOND, FORMER YARBOROUGH CREW MEMBER, RECALLS 1979 DAYTONA 500 BRAWL THAT PUT NASCAR ON THE MAP
SPEED™/FOX SPORTS ANALYST REFLECTS ON LAST-LAP CRASH, HISTORIC FISTFIGHT THAT CAPTIVATED THE NATION
Hammond: “I remember looking over at Junior (Johnson) and thinking, ‘If the boss man isn’t running down there, he must not think it’s a big enough deal’… so I started cleaning up the pits.”
While a massive snowstorm raged in the Northeast, the perfect storm rolled into Daytona International Speedway 30 years ago. The first live flag-to-flag coverage of a 500-mile race, a last-lap crash, fisticuffs and millions of housebound Americans collided to put NASCAR on the map following the infamous 1979 Daytona 500.
Jeff Hammond, a young crew member for the feisty Cale Yarborough that day, could have had a front row seat to the legendary slugfest but instead followed the lead of his boss and car owner, Junior Johnson.
Without today’s benefit of a real-time television broadcast in the pit stall, Hammond and crew listened to the track announcer’s race call as their driver battled for the win in the illustrious Daytona 500. But Yarborough and Donnie Allison crashed after beating and banging for the lead on the final lap. While the men emerged from their mangled machines, Bobby Allison stopped to check on the two. Punches and helmets began flying and Richard Petty took the checkered flag to break a 45-race winless streak.
Hammond, 22 years old at the time, heard the devastating news that his driver wasn’t headed to Victory Lane but it took him a moment to process the spectacle unfolding in Turn Four.
“Our crew’s yelling, ‘Hey – there’s a fight down in Turn Four!’” said Hammond, a two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship crew chief who now serves as a SPEED and FOX Sports analyst. “Half the crew took off running toward Turn Four to help Cale out. I remember looking over at Junior (Johnson) and thinking, ‘If the boss man isn’t running down there, he must not think it’s a big enough deal and he certainly didn’t tell me to go down there,’ so I started cleaning up the pits.
“I realized Junior wasn’t big on the fighting thing and I later asked him, ‘Junior, why didn’t you go down there?’ He said, ‘He started it. He can finish it,’” Hammond added.
That may have been one of the first fights Hammond walked away from … or at least didn’t walk directly toward.
“I’m enough of a country redneck that losing the Daytona 500 that way and having Cale down there fighting reminded me of the way we used to do it on short tracks,” Hammond said. “If you can’t win the race, you’ve got to win the fight.”
But NASCAR was the hands-down heavyweight champion of the year in the 1979 Daytona 500. Many credit the brawl with putting the sport on the national map and elevating it to the prominence and skyrocketing popularity it enjoyed over the next few decades.
“Even after 30 years, it’s hard to put into words what really was accomplished that day by a twist of fate with the snowstorm and subsequent fight after those guys had raced their guts out for 500 miles,” stated Hammond, who, 10 years later led Darrell Waltrip to his Daytona 500 victory. “Even the guy who ended up winning the race was monumental - Richard Petty. I don’t think the entire debacle would have had the same impact if someone besides The King had won that race.”
