{"id":10829,"date":"2015-01-08T09:43:39","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T17:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=10829"},"modified":"2015-01-09T14:42:39","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T22:42:39","slug":"texas-terry-labonte-takes-first-nascar-win-at-darlington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/texas-terry-labonte-takes-first-nascar-win-at-darlington\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas\u2019 Terry Labonte Takes First NASCAR win at Darlington"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 1980 Southern 500 at the famed Darlington Raceway \u00a0gave NASCAR fans a brand new superstar and a surprise finish.<\/p>\n

\"14TerryLabonte1980Southern500CarPHOTO\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A packed house of 75,000 avid fans \u00a0on a hot, hazy, and humid Labor Day buzzed in the egg-shaped 1.366-mile superspeedway waiting for that epic moment that hits nearly every race – the decisive beat signalling victory or defeat.<\/p>\n

At Darlington in 1980, that moment happened when a late race caution flag flew for a Cale Yarborough\u2019s spin down the front stretch, resetting \u00a0the field for the five remaining laps of the race. David Pearson took over as the leader, driving the Hoss Ellington\u2019s Hawaiian Tropic Chevrolet Monte Carlo, after \u00a0Darrell Waltrip’s DiGard\/Gatorade Chevrolet lost power due to a broken timing chain. Waltrip had dominated for 196 laps of the 367-lap event.<\/p>\n

The field bunched up behind Pearson \u00a0when the green flag waved\u00a0with Benny Parsons driving for M.C. Anderson in second, Dale Earnhardt in his Rod Osterlund Chevrolet third and Terry Labonte piloting the Billy Hagan\/Apache Stove Chevy, fourth respectively.<\/p>\n

Parsons made a quick move at the green to pull alongside Pearson for the pass, but had to back off in turn two, giving Earnhardt the outside momentum to get by Parsons.\u00a0 With three to go Earnhardt dove to the inside \u00a0and for just a moment took the lead.\u00a0 Pearson, using his years of Darlington smarts, followed the fast lane staying high and moving around Earnhardt to get back in front.<\/p>\n

From there, it looked like clear sailing for Pearson. \u00a0Then \u00a0with all eyes on turns three and four, independent campaigner Frank Warren blew his engine entering turn one, at the same time leaving an oil slick in his wake.<\/p>\n

The rest of the field was crossing the start\/finish line to begin lap 365 and the leaders were barreling toward turn one. \u00a0Pearson, Earnhardt and Parsons lost control, sliding in the oil and crunching their race cars into the outside wall. Parsons spun to the inside while Pearson tried valiantly to maintain his speed and distance over the field.<\/p>\n

\"14TerryLabonte1980Southern500VictoryLane\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pearson\u2019s damaged Chevy had knocked all the handling out of his car and was slowing down enough to negotiate turns three and four when a new name appeared on the lead lap: Terry Labonte, who’d somehow escaped the melee. Labonte was rapidly approaching out of nowhere, \u00a0looking to pass Pearson for the win.<\/p>\n

The pair charged to the finish with Labonte hitting his accelerator just quick enough to pull along side of Pearson, who blocked to the inside pushing Labonte down the track. \u00a0 Labonte surged forward just enough, slipping by Pearson a slim two feet in front as they crossed the line, winning Labonte his first NASCAR race at the age of 23.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know if I had beat Pearson until I crossed the line when the crew radioed me telling me I had,\u201d said a triumphant Labonte.\u00a0 \u201cUp until that point I didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really know what happened in turns one and two, they all got together.\u00a0 Pearson was the only one running in front of me.\u00a0 I saw his car was messed up, so I ran as hard as I could and I got by him right at the start\/finish line.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just going to be party tonight; we\u2019re going to celebrate the whole week!\u201d<\/p>\n

It took Labonte four hours, 21 minutes and five seconds at an average speed of 115.21 mph to win the race and $27,325.\u00a0 The Darlington slugfest saw 14 caution flags thrown for 79 laps.\u00a0Harry Gant, Benny Parsons, and Neil Bonnett rounded out the top five.<\/p>\n

Labonte would go on to have a stellar NASCAR career, winning the Sprint Cup championship twice (1984 and 1996), winning 22 races, and earning 506 top 10 finishes along with 57 poles.<\/p>\n

The 2015 Southern 500 resumes its Labor Day weekend place on the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule on Sunday, Sept. 6.<\/p>\n

Click here for a video of the 1980 Southern 500<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1980 Darlington Southern 500 had a surprise finish in the typical slugfest.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[1337,1775,1778,1777,1776,1774,127,1773,663],"class_list":["post-10829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","tag-tbt","tag-benny-parsons","tag-darlington-superspeedway","tag-darrell-waltrip","tag-david-pearson","tag-harry-gant","tag-nascar","tag-terry-labonte","tag-throwback-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/14TerryLabonte1980Southern500CarPHOTO-feature.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-2OF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10829"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10933,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10829\/revisions\/10933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}