Yarborough wouldn't mind sharing mark with Johnson

He was old enough to begin displaying the talent that would one day make him a champion in NASCAR's top division, but still young enough to be gulled by the power of advertising. Jimmie Johnson was just a kid when he saw his first Hardee's, somewhere on a trip cross-country to race dirt bikes. The tyke burst excitedly into the fast-food restaurant, expecting to see his idol Cale Yarborough tinkering with the No. 28 Hardee's Chevrolet he drove each weekend on television.

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Cale Yarborough

Easy as 1, 2, 3

Cale Yarborough is the only driver to win three consecutive Cup titles. Mark Aumann discovers that, while it wasn't that easy, it's not impossible to someone to repeat, either.

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"I thought Cale Yarborough was going to be in there. I thought it was the race shop," Johnson says now, laughing. "We went in, and it had nothing to do with the racecar. It was just a place where you get a burger. But I was like, 'Where's Cale? What's the problem?' I couldn't understand that."

Years later, Johnson at last has an opportunity to catch up to his hero -- not just in person, but in the record books. With back-to-back titles in hand, the Hendrick Motorsports driver enters this season with a chance of tying Yarborough's mark of three consecutive Cup championships, set from 1976-78. Since then, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon have each made futile runs at NASCAR's version of the three-peat. In fact, Yarborough's triple is the only run of three consecutive titles ever achieved in any of the sport's three national series, even though 13 other drivers -- nine in Sprint Cup, and four in Nationwide -- have made attempts.

It's an achievement that Yarborough, now a car dealer in Florence, S.C., is understandably proud of. But he wouldn't mind some company at the top of the list.

"I wanted to win that [third consecutive title] bad, because nobody else had ever done it," said Yarborough, whose 83 career Cup victories rank fifth all-time, just ahead of sixth-place Gordon with 81. "It was pretty special, because nobody else has done it since, either. But Jimmie's got a good shot at it this time, and if he does it, it would suit me fine, because he's a good guy."

They're a strange combination, one an ultra-smooth, laid-back driver from Southern California, the other a hard-nosed scrapper -- literally, judging from the aftermath of the 1979 Daytona 500 -- from South Carolina's tobacco and cotton country. But there's a clear mutual respect between the two, even though they've only met in passing and don't know one another very well. Even Johnson isn't clear on exactly why he embraced Yarborough, although it might have had something to do with Cale's success during his formative years. Yarborough won seven races, including two Daytona 500s, driving that Hardee's car that Johnson remembers so well.

"I'm not really sure," Johnson admits. "Just being a kid in Southern California, seeing his success, I don't have any clear memories as of why. We're totally different. I think one of my earliest memories of him is when he crashed trying to get the pole at Talladega or Daytona, and a windshield fell out of the car and he was tumbling down the track. I remember that as a kid." (Continued)