1,000 Greatest Drivers: Dale Jarrett
"I'M IN THE WALL."
In my early years as a NASCAR fan, my dad and I used to frequently quote Jarrett’s deadpan radio delivery from when he crashed while leading upon hitting the oil spot Brett Bodine left on the track in the 1996 Southern 500, which cost him in the Winston Million in a race I suspect he easily would have won otherwise. That entire sequence was hilarious, as seconds earlier, Bob Jenkins had a dyslexic faux pas and misidentified the race as being in “Southern California” instead of “South Carolina”. I used to downplay Jarrett a lot and probably underrated him too much because he peaked during an era that did not have the greatest competition and I didn’t think he was as versatile as a lot of other champions and I thought that of the four major Robert Yates drivers, he was the least talented behind Ernie Irvan, Ricky Rudd, and Davey Allison who I probably would have taken in that order back then.
Having said that, I have come around to Jarrett since then and I believe I have a more accurate perspective today. One thing I appreciate more than I did is that he was cleaner than a lot of his peers and he let his racing do the talking while avoiding controversy, unlike many later Gen X drivers who seemed to take pride in being obnoxious (including several who I do think were better than Jarrett). Additionally, I used to really overrate drivers who ran well on short tracks and road courses and underrate superspeedway specialists. Once I did my lead change study and observed that success on superspeedways did seem to be strongly correlated with passing ability elsewhere, my opinion of drivers who were best on superspeedways (like Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Sterling Marlin, and Jarrett) has substantially risen while my opinion of short track/road course specialists who were awkward on superspeedways (like Rusty Wallace, Rudd, and Geoff Bodine) has somewhat declined. I’d never say Rudd was better than Jarrett now and I think that’s far too contrarian. Rudd had a lot of good seasons but few great ones and Jarrett’s best seasons were obviously better, not to mention that he outperformed him when they were teammates and they were almost exactly the same age. I still think Irvan and Davey were better, but obviously, Jarrett was more successful because he got to have a full career and they did not.
When I looked up Jarrett’s teammate head-to-heads, I had no record against Michael Waltrip and P.J. Jones even though I did on my master file, so I guess I must’ve forgotten to enter those and I’ll need to do so later. Since those were both during his Michael Waltrip Racing period, his rating will likely be a little lower than it is now. It’s wildly inaccurate anyway as with most boomer drivers since Irvan and Rudd’s ratings are also wildly inaccurate, so you can just ignore that.
Jarrett is I believe the first driver whose best race (which I judged to be his debut win at Michigan in 1991) came in a season I didn’t list in my top 200 that year. I debated with myself about whether I should rate this season or not but I decided not to because Jarrett was in his mid-30s (what is usually a peak age for a Cup driver) yet he was replaced by Morgan Shepherd who at that time was in his 50s and actually improved upon him. I think that was his best race even if the season wasn’t good enough to rate.
