Nascar’s Top ‘Rustler’ Still Seeking More Horses

“I know I’m rambling here,” Robert Yates apologized.

He had heard himself mention communism as he answered a question about his childhood, when he was the ninth of nine children of a strict Baptist minister. Oops. Time to put it in reverse.

One side of his mind enjoys running the Olympic torch, and makes Havoline commercials and deals with the insatiable world on the doorstep of NASCAR.

The other side of his mind wrestles with force and drive and ignition. There is always part of Robert Yates that drifts back underneath the hood.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever met a genius,” Dale Jarrett said. “But Robert’s the closest thing I know.”

Jarrett has driven Yates’ Ford to victories at Daytona and Charlotte. A checkered flag in Darlington on Sept. 1 will give the team a $1 million bonus. At Charlotte, Jarrett felt more like a astronaut than a jockey. “Robert gave me such a good car, a lot of people could have won with it,” he said.

Four different drivers - Lee Roy Yarbrough, Bobby Allison, Davey Allison and Jarrett - have won Daytona 500s with engines built by Yates. Since he bought his racing team in late 1988, Yates has seen Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan and Jarrett win 18 races and finish in the top 10 116 times. This year Yates is running two cars - Irvan’s and Jarrett’s - for the first time.

“But this is the first year he’s had his own airplane,” Jarrett said. “It’s a no-frills operation. He puts the money into racing.”

Yates would have preferred the driver’s seat, but Yates has a significant problem. “Every time I turn my head left, I get dizzy and nearly pass out,” he said. Squads of doctors find it inexplicable. Yates was a drag racer in his youth and reckons he might be winning his own races if NASCAR would just let the boys turn right.

“I don’t mind saying I was a little nervous when I told my parents what I was planning to do with my life,” said Yates, who is now 53. “Stock-car racing had an image of criminals and rednecks. I wasn’t really rebellious, but I would burn rubber in the church parking lot.”

At 25, Yates joined Holman-Moody, a company that built engines for seven racing teams. Yates was so good that Junior Johnson asked him to build engines for his Chevrolets. Yates would work a full shift at HolmanMoody in Charlotte, snake his way 76 miles through foothill roads to Johnson’s shop and work there until past midnight.

In the early ‘70s, Detroit abandoned stock-car racing, and gas became scarce and expensive. “Junior said we wouldn’t have racing anymore,” said Yates.

Junior (who retired last year) was wrong. In 1972, he and Yates worked on two cars that Bobby Allison took through the whole 30-race schedule, Today, Yates supervises 22 cars for Irvan and Jarrett.

“Great highs and great lows in this business,” he said.

Nearby, a chart listed everything Davey Allison had crammed into his 32-year-old life, before it ended in July 12, 1993. Yates was working here when Allison’s helicopter plunged into the Talladega infield.

There were reports that Yates considered chucking his life’s work in the aftermath. Elliptically, he denies them. “I didn’t choose this business, it chose me,” he said. “Besides, there’s nothing about Davey I ever want to forget.”

Yates considered changing the logo, color and even the sponsorship of the No. 28 car, but kept its distinctive red-gold-black look so Irvan could drive it. In August of ‘94 Irvan drove into a wall in Michigan and was comatose for weeks. Jarrett stepped in. When Irvan came back in October ‘95, Yates used both drivers.

Now Jarrett goes for the bonus at Darlington. But Yates has already lived his dream seasons, none sweeter than 1992, when Davey Allison’s late accident at Atlanta denied him a points championship.

“We ran the whole circuit that year and didn’t blow one engine,” he said.

Yates is so proud of that, he wants to do that again. “In 20 years’ time,” he said, “we’ve gone from getting 550 horsepower out of a 430 cubic-inch engine, to getting 730 horsepower out of a 358 cubic-inch engine.” He says he lies awake at night, figuring out how to get more.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Mark Whicker Orange County Register