The Daytona 500 is one of the most celebrated races in motorsports, even outside of NASCAR. Cale Yarborough brought home his first Daytona 500 win in 1968. He then proceeded to win it again in 1977, then back to back in 1983 and 1984. That’s a historic accomplishment for any driver (he was the second racer ever to do it), much less someone who had been racing since the 1950s.
Yarborough could have potentially won it in 1979. Instead, he made NASCAR history another way. During the last lap of the 1979 Daytona 500 (coincidentally the first nationally televised 500), Yarborough and Donnie Allison were duking it out for first place, sharing no small number of taps and shoves. Donnie and Cale wrecked, and Richard Petty, a leisurely 17 full seconds behind, won the race.
But it wasn’t over. Bobby Allison, Donnie’s brother who had wrecked earlier in the race, went to check on the wreck with Donnie and Cale, and a full-on fistfight erupted between Yarborough and the Allison Brothers. According to NBC, the combination of Richard Petty’s unlikely win and three respected drivers punching each other and throwing helmets after the race helped make NASCAR popular in the rest of the country where it wasn’t traditionally televised.