Double Clutchin’-The Difference Between Being Good And Being Great
Written by Rocky Kitts · May 18, 2008
I’m not the type of person who is entertained by All-Star celebrations in sports. It’s usually a bunch of athletes who are only there because their contracts say that they have to be; who are content to just not get hurt. That being said; the NASCAR All-Star celebration is a pretty good example of what an All-Star exhibition should be: it’s different from the norm, it offers a million reasons ($) for the drivers to give it their best, and the fans have an opportunity to be interactive in voting a driver into the race who wouldn’t have made it otherwise. Sure, the fans showed bad judgment in who they voted in, but it should make NASCAR proud that a high number of their fans must be eight-year-old girls and middle-aged women. “Oh that Kasey…sigh”.
Enough about that, the race itself was meaningless in the grand scheme of things, so that’s not what we’re going to talk about. What we’re going to talk about is that another one of the old guard has dropped out of NASCAR, with Dale Jarrett racing his last NASCAR race. Now this was a ceremonial last race more than anything else, as Jarrett raced his last points race at Bristol, earlier this year, but it gives us the opportunity to look at Jarrett’s place in NASCAR’s history.
With Jarrett’s retirement, another slot is open for a young guy to step into, but just how big are the shoes that he will have to fill? I have never been a huge DJ fan, and honestly, I’ve long considered him just another driver. I was set to write this article and talk about how Jarrett was a good driver, but not a great one. Then I started doing some research, and I was surprised by what I found.
While most of Jarrett’s career is solid, I was shocked when I really looked at Jarrett’s numbers for the period of 1996-2002. During these years, Jarrett racked up 26 wins, 117 top fives, and 156 top tens. Add to those stats, a points championship in 1999 and top fives in the points every one of those years except ’02, and folks; that’s a pretty impressive resume without even looking at the rest of Jarrett’s career.
But that is where the rubber meets the road. Jarrett raced for 21 years if you start him from 1987; the year that he came in second to Davey Allison for Rookie of the Year. That’s a long career, but the majority of Jarrett’s success took place over the course of seven seasons. Over the last several seasons Jarrett has become more well known for his UPS commercials, and while he has done a good job of not turning into Kyle Petty and getting in the way, he hasn’t exactly been a week-to-week contender, either.
So the question remains, when you look at Dale Jarrett’s career, do you think of him as a great driver, or do you look at him as a driver who was hot for a while and then leveled off due to other factors? In short, was he good or was he great?
I would say that Jarrett was a very good driver, a very classy driver, and that he occupies that second slot for ranking drivers. He’s by no means a Richard Petty, a Dale Earnhardt, or a Darrell Waltrip, but not many drivers are even within sniffing distance of those guys. Jarrett had a mid-career run that had he been able to maintain it, would have put him in that top tier, but he wasn’t able to keep it going. But, if you asked most drivers if they would take Jarrett’s career, I don’t think that you’d have to wait long for the “Yes!”
Mainly because of this stat:
$51,168,464 career earnings. That’s stouter than Ken Patera in an 80’s strongman competition.
Stats for this article can be verified at NASCAR.com
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I think you summed up DJ’s career perfectly. The money aspect is totally warping any sense of rational assessment. I saw Helio Castroneves on ESPN2 yesterday morning and one factoid they flashed was Helios career earnings: 5.1 mill, more or less. And that includes two huge Indy 500 payouts!
And we wonder why everybody wants to be a cab driver??
Thank you. The money is just ridiculous, and when you look at what the earnings are it makes me wish that the contracts that these guys sign was public knowledge. Bet that information would cause a few more crashes, lol.