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February 6, 2002
10:44 PM EST (0344 GMT)
When he first got behind the wheel of a race car, Larry Pearson felt almost compelled to try and duplicate, even top the exploits of his legendary father.
As time went on, however, Pearson came to a staunch realization. David Pearson he wasn't, but then again, not many people are.
"There was no way, no way that I could accomplish what he's accomplished," Larry Pearson said of his Hall of Fame father. "What he's done in racing is just absolutely remarkable. When I first started, I had my sights set on that, but that was unrealistic.
"As I went on further in my career, I began to realize more and more just how special the things he had accomplished were. I figured at that point if I could do half of what he's done, then I could have a successful career. Drivers like dad don't just come along every day."
Indeed. All David Pearson did during his illustrious NASCAR Winston Cup driving career was win 105 races, second only to the incredible total of 200 compiled by "The King," Richard Petty. He won 49 superspeedway races, second only to Petty's 55 and 113 career poles, second only to Petty's 126.
When it came to qualifying at superspeedways, David didn't take a back seat to anybody. He won 58 superspeedway poles, including a record 14 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which included an incredible 11 in a row at the 1.5-mile track from 1973 to 1978, a feat that most likely will never be duplicated at any race track.
David is also the all-time winningest driver at Darlington Raceway with 10 wins and 12 poles.
A total of 43 of his career wins came while driving the legendary No. 21 Ford fielded by the Wood Brothers between 1972 and 1978. He won 11 times in 1973, and earned 10 victories in 1976.
His biggest accomplishment came in 1968 and 1969, when he won back-to-back NASCAR Grand National championships -- the predecessor to the NASCAR Winston Cup Series -- in a Holman-Moody Ford, winning a combined 27 races during those two seasons. He also won a NASCAR Grand National championship in 1966 in a Cotton Owens-owned Dodge, winning 14 races that season.
Growing up, Larry said he didn't get as much of a chance to watch his father race as he would have liked. He had a few other things to do, like namely, go to school.
"They were traveling so much and so far, and they were running 60 or 70 races a year, so I couldn't really go to a lot of 'em," said the 47-year-old Spartanburg native. "Of course I'd go to the ones at Charlotte, Darlington, Atlanta or maybe Rockingham, and when I did go, it was quite an event. I knew at an early age that dad was something special to watch on the race track."
Of all his accomplishments, Larry said his biggest thrill was watching David win the 1976 Daytona 500, the only time that his father would win the "Great American Race," before he finally retired from racing in 1986.
David has been named to every Hall of Fame imaginable in stock car racing, including the International Motorsports Hall of Fame at Talladega and the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame in Darlington.
A lot to live up to, for sure, but then Larry said nobody expected him to be better than his father.
"It's a lot like Kyle Petty trying to live up to what Richard Petty did. It just wasn't possible," Larry said. "I felt like, because dad gave me a lot of advice and did a lot of things to help me get started, that I had to perform well. But the pressure to do what he did was never there. I realized soon after I started that I had to start from the bottom just like everybody else did."
Not that Larry Pearson hasn't had a lot to be proud of during his racing career. On the contrary.
Larry racked up 15 career victories in the NASCAR Busch Series Grand National Division since breaking in full-time in 1984 with a team owned by his father, including back-to-back championships in 1986-87. He won the 1986 championship with only one victory, compared to five victories that year for Jack Ingram and four for Tommy Houston.
In 1987, he had his best season, winning six times in 27 starts and earning over $256,000.
Two moments he'll never forget as a driver, however, were his first victory, at Hickory Motor Speedway in the Bobby Isaac Memorial in 1986, and his win at Darlington, a track where his father was so dominant during his career, in 1995. Ironically, that win has proven to be his last.
"I've had a pretty good career of my own, and I take a lot of pride in the things I've done," Larry said. "I look back and think, 'it hasn't been too bad.' One thing I've always wanted, however, was a third championship. He (David) won three championships, and I did want to match him there.
"One of the things I've always regretted was that I've made some bad decisions in my life. I've gone with some teams that maybe I shouldn't have. I just wasn't in the right situation. I think maybe if I had been in the right situation, I might have won a couple of more championships and a few more races. But those are decisions I've made, and I've had to live with them."
In 1989, Larry took a stab at moving up to the NASCAR Winston Cup level with a family-owned car. He said he tasted a bit of success there while running for NASCAR Winston Cup Rookie of the Year
honors, but his sponsor pulled out of the sport at the end of the season, and his father didn't have enough financial backing to keep the team going.
It was back to the NASCAR Busch Series, which wasn't a bad thing, but Larry said he would have liked to have had a better opportunity to prove himself at the NASCAR Winston Cup level.
"We had just come off a very successful Busch career, and I think we had some pretty good finishes that year (1989)," Larry said. "I guess we spoiled our sponsor with the Busch success. After that we couldn't find a sponsor to keep things going. It's really sad. But when I got back into the Busch Series, I was competitive again, and we stayed that way until 1997."
For all intents and purposes, that has been the end of Larry Pearson's driving career, although he never uttered the word "retire."
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