A 1987 crash into the Talladega fence gave NASCAR restrictor plates. The Jack Link's 500, YellaWood 500, Goodyear 400 and Cook Out 400, and the incidents that shaped them.
The YellaWood 500 and Jack Link's 500 are NASCAR Cup races at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. The Goodyear 400 is run at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, and the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia, where winners receive a grandfather clock.
In 1987 at Talladega, Bobby Allison cut a tyre on lap 22 and his Buick took off, tearing roughly 100 feet out of the catch fence by the main grandstand. Nobody was seriously hurt, but the scare changed how NASCAR races at Daytona and Talladega. Cars at the next superspeedway race, at Daytona, ran smaller carburettors, and from 1988 every Daytona and Talladega race used carburettor restrictor plates, until a new aerodynamics package followed the 2019 Daytona 500.
That race is now called the Jack Link's 500. It sits among four NASCAR Cup Series events whose names have changed with their sponsors, and whose histories run far deeper than the branding: the YellaWood 500 and Jack Link's 500 at Talladega, the Goodyear 400 at Darlington, and the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville.
The YellaWood 500 at Talladega
The YellaWood 500 is the autumn Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Alabama, and it is part of the NASCAR playoffs. It is listed as one of four Cup races run with restrictor plates, alongside the Daytona 500, the Coke Zero Sugar 400 and Talladega's spring race, the Jack Link's 500.
It did not always sit in the playoffs. Through 1996 it was normally run in late July or early August. In 1997 it moved to early October because of the heat and the sudden thunderstorms of an Alabama summer. In 2009 it moved again, to 1 November, as part of a swap with Atlanta and Fontana that gave Fontana a race in the Chase and Atlanta the Labor Day weekend date. Names have shifted too. In 1998 the autumn race swapped titles with the spring one and was called the Winston 500 for three years, promoting the Winston No Bull 5 programme.
What defines the race is how close it runs. It has topped 40 official lead changes in every season from 2003 to 2013, in 2019 and 2020, and from 2022 to 2024, and earlier in 1971, 1973, 1975 to 1978, 1983, 1984, 1989 and 2000. Thirteen of those seasons went past 60, the latest with 66 in 2024. In 2010 it reached 87, one short of the record set at the track that April. It also has a name for upsets: in its first 40 years seven drivers took their first career win there, and the surprise winners include Bubba Wallace, Jamie McMurray, Jimmy Spencer, Dave Marcis and James Hylton.
A tyre cut on lap 22 in 1987 sent a car into the fence, and NASCAR has raced restrictor-plate cars at Talladega ever since.
Seasons of drama at the YellaWood 500
The 1969 event was marred by a strike by the Professional Drivers Association over safety, even though officials demonstrated that the track was fit to race on. Three years later Hylton won on a year-old Goodyear compound while the fast qualifiers used a newer one. Joe Frasson, who crashed early on the new rubber, scorned it loudly. Thirty-two of 50 starters failed to finish, and Hylton led 106 laps and held off Ramo Stott at the line.
In 1973 Dick Brooks won from 24th on the grid in a Plymouth Roadrunner, with 64 lead changes, a record that stood until 1978. A year later crewmen found slashed tyres, tampered alignments and dirt in fuel lines before the start, and NASCAR threw competition yellows so teams could look for more sabotage. Richard Petty took the win on the final lap, clipping Pearson's car in the tri-oval to cross the line first. In 1975 Tiny Lund, a former Daytona 500 winner, was killed in a backstretch melee.
The 1984 race is the one many regard as NASCAR's greatest. There were 68 lead changes involving 16 drivers, and Dale Earnhardt took the first win of his partnership with Richard Childress by three lengths after drafting past on the high side with Buddy Baker. Earnhardt beat Ernie Irvan by five thousandths of a second in 1993, a race that also brought two heavy crashes: Stanley Smith survived a near-fatal skull fracture, and Neil Bonnett's car flew into the catch fence. The first led to catch fencing along the whole perimeter of Daytona and Talladega, and the second to roof flaps in 1994.
In 1996 Sterling Marlin tried to pass Earnhardt on the outside and Irvan tapped Marlin from behind. Earnhardt's car flipped and was struck again on its roof, ten cars were destroyed, and Earnhardt climbed out with a broken collarbone, sternum and shoulder blade, refusing a stretcher and waving to the crowd. It finished with a five-lap dash to the flag. Four years later, in 2000, Earnhardt charged from the high teens to the lead in the last few laps, a win that would be his last: his 76th. Dale Earnhardt Jr. went from leading to 14th. In 2001 Junior won, and was docked 25 points when his car failed inspection for a shortened rear spoiler.
The Jack Link's 500 at Talladega
The Jack Link's 500 is the spring Cup race at Talladega. From 1970 until the Ferko lawsuit in 2004 it counted as the second leg of NASCAR's Grand Slam races, and it was once part of the Winston Million. Carson Hocevar holds the title after his 2026 win.
The record book here is dense. In 1976 Buddy Baker became the first to finish a 500-miler in less than three hours, taking Bud Moore's Ford home in 2 hours 56 minutes. In 1982 Benny Parsons set the first 200 mph qualifying lap NASCAR had seen. In 1984 Cale Yarborough passed Harry Gant on the last lap in a race with a record 75 lead changes, a mark that fell in 2010 with 88 and was tied in 2011. In 1997 Mark Martin won the quickest NASCAR race on record, averaging 188.354 mph. Jeff Gordon scored his 50th career win in 2000 after starting 36th, the farthest back anyone has started at Talladega.
Some finishes changed the rulebook. In 1988 Phil Parsons won his only Cup race, in a day overshadowed by an incident between A. J. Foyt and Alan Kulwicki that led to a six-month suspension for Foyt and a $5,000 fine; Les Richter lifted the suspension but raised the fine to $7,500. In 1994 Earnhardt won and dedicated it to Ayrton Senna, who had died that day at Imola. In 2003 a lap-four crash involving 27 cars was the largest ever recorded in the Cup Series. Earnhardt Jr. won his fourth consecutive Talladega race, but the finish was disputed: after the 2001 spring race NASCAR had ruled the yellow line at the foot of the track out of bounds, and Earnhardt's left wheels went below it passing Matt Kenseth. NASCAR ruled it a clean pass.
The 2004 race led to two new rules. A spinout by Brian Vickers with 4 1/3 laps to go brought out the yellow, and under the new beneficiary rule the field raced no further, so Jeff Gordon won under caution. Angry fans threw rubbish on the track, following a similar protest at Daytona in 2002, and NASCAR brought in overtime for the Cup and Nationwide series within two months. In 2009, Carl Edwards' car was launched into the catch fence at the finish as Brad Keselowski won in only his fifth Cup start, and the debris injured eight spectators, none seriously. Then in 2010 came a record 88 lead changes, 87 of them in regulation, with a record 29 different leaders and three overtime attempts. Darrell Waltrip called it the Greatest Talladega Race Ever.
The Goodyear 400 at Darlington
The Goodyear 400 is a Cup race at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, usually early in the season. Tyler Reddick has the most recent win. Darlington held a 100-mile race in May 1952, but the event only became a regular NASCAR date in 1957, as a 300-mile Convertible Division race known as the Rebel 300. It grew to 400 miles in 1966, to 500 miles in 1973, and went back to 400 in 1994. For a time it was run around Confederate Memorial Day, 10 May in South Carolina.
In 2005 the Ferko lawsuit settlement and a schedule realignment cost Darlington one of its two dates, and the Southern 500 took the 400's date before returning to Labor Day in 2015. In 2020 the pandemic brought Darlington back into the spring, with The Real Heroes 400 on 17 May and the Toyota 500 on 20 May. On 30 September 2020 it was announced that Darlington would keep a permanent second Cup date from 2021, on Mother's Day, 9 May, as a 400-miler on throwback weekend. Goodyear, NASCAR's official tyre, would be the title sponsor.
The track has a rough history. In 1970 Petty hit the outside wall and then the inside wall and flipped; a rag he held in his mouth flew out and ABC mistook it for something worse. Petty survived, and the crash led NASCAR to mandate Petty-developed window nets, which are still used. In 1979 Waltrip beat Petty in a duel that saw four lead changes on lap 365 and three on the last lap, and David Pearson lost two wheels leaving the pits after a miscommunication over a two-tyre stop; a week later he split from the Wood Brothers after 43 wins. In 1980 Pearson took his 105th and final Cup win, his tenth at Darlington, in a rain-hit race stopped after 189 laps because the track had no lights.
In 1987 Bill Elliott's car coasted out of turn four on the last lap, out of fuel, and Earnhardt swept past. In 1990 Ernie Irvan, ten laps down, raced Ken Schrader as if for the lead and caused a pile-up in which Neil Bonnett lost much of his memory and stayed out of racing until 1993. Earnhardt won his ninth and last Darlington race in 1994, putting him second to Pearson's ten. In 2003 Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch by 0.002 seconds, the joint-closest finish in NASCAR's electronic scoring era, a record that lasted 21 years, until Kyle Larson's win in the 2024 AdventHealth 400. In 2020 Kevin Harvick won the first Cup race since 8 March at Phoenix, behind closed doors, with a team limit of 16 and no practice or qualifying after a 72-day suspension.
The Cook Out 400 at Martinsville
The Cook Out 400 runs on the 0.526-mile (0.847 km) oval at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, and is the first of two Cup races at the track. The winner receives a grandfather clock, a tradition since 1964.
It had no name from 1950 to 1955, then became the Virginia 500 in 1956. Goody's Powder sponsored the spring race from 1996 to 2000 and returned in 2007 as the Goody's Cool Orange 500. Tums, owned by the same parent company as Goody's, backed the autumn race from 2008 to 2012, and STP took the spring title from 2013 to 2019. Blue-Emu took over in 2020, the distance was cut to 400 laps in 2022, NOCO sponsored it in 2023, and Cook Out has done so since 2024.
Martinsville tends to reward short-track specialists and slow-burn stories. Morgan Shepherd scored his first Winston Cup win in 1981, the first for Pontiac since October 1963. Geoff Bodine took the first win for Hendrick Motorsports in 1984. In 1986 Ricky Rudd won a race where attrition left every other car at least a lap behind him. Rusty Wallace won four consecutive spring races from 1993 to 1996, and Petty did the same in the fall from 1967 to 1970. Jeff Gordon ended Wallace's streak in 1997. In 1999 John Andretti gave Petty Enterprises its 268th and last win.
The Car of Tomorrow raced for the second time at Martinsville in 2007, and Jimmie Johnson held off Gordon after repeated contact. Kurt Busch won in 2014 with a track-record 33 lead changes, breaking the 31 set in 2011. In 2018 snow pushed the race to Monday and Clint Bowyer ended a 190-race winless streak. Brad Keselowski led 446 laps in 2019.
The four races compared
| Race | Track | Location | Time of year | Notable feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| YellaWood 500 | Talladega Superspeedway | Lincoln, Alabama | Autumn, in the playoffs | Restrictor-plate race; final career win for Earnhardt in 2000 |
| Jack Link's 500 | Talladega Superspeedway | Lincoln, Alabama | May | Fastest NASCAR race ever run, 188.354 mph in 1997 |
| Goodyear 400 | Darlington Raceway | Darlington, South Carolina | Early in the season | 400 miles (640 km); Mother's Day date from 2021 |
| Cook Out 400 | Martinsville Speedway | Ridgeway, Virginia | First of two Cup races | Grandfather clock for the winner since 1964 |
Rules these races changed
Several rules in use today began as reactions at these tracks. The 1987 fence incident led to restrictor plates. The 1993 crashes produced perimeter catch fencing and roof flaps. The 1970 Darlington flip brought window nets. The 2004 Talladega finish and fan reaction, together with the earlier protest at Daytona, brought overtime.
Where the four races stand now
Talladega's autumn race remains a playoff event, and the spring race lists Hocevar as its most recent winner after 2026. Darlington's spring weekend has been a permanent fixture since 2021, with Goodyear naming the 400. Overtime finishes have stretched Darlington in 2023 and 2025, and Martinsville in 2022 and 2024.
