Jarrett

Dale Jarrett will make the 500th start of his Winston Cup career Sunday in the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington Raceway.

Since he began his stock car career in 1984, the son of two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett has won 31 races and the 1999 series championship.

"I guess my winning percentage isn't very good when you look at it that way,'' Jarrett joked. "It's hard to believe it's been 500 races. There are a lot of them I can remember and a lot of them I can forget, too.

"Darlington is a pretty special place for that. There are a lot of things that have taken place there, whether it was my career or my dad's career. I remember being there when he won the Southern 500 and basically clinched the championship in 1965. But, aside from that, I've been very fortunate as a driver to do well there.''

The younger Jarrett didn't get his first win on the 1.366-mile egg-shaped South Carolina oval until spring 1997. Since then, he has added two more wins and, overall, has 11 top-fives and 13 top-10s at the track.

"One of the reasons I've done well there is due to the help I got from people like Harry Gant,'' Jarrett said. "I just asked him one day how you get around that place when I was in the Busch Series and he explained how he did it. I watched David Pearson and then being able to compete against him in the Busch series there, and then watching Dale Earnhardt helped, too.

"Those are three different styles, but I picked up a little bit from each of them and utilized each of those styles at different points in probably every race.''

Darlington is known as "The Track Too Tough to Tame,'' and Jarrett knows how tough it can be.

"The challenge of Darlington is unbelievable,'' he said. "You can't go out and build tracks like that anymore. The two ends are so totally different, trying to get a car set up for both is almost impossible, so the driver really has to do his part.

"It's as hard of an afternoon as you'll have as a driver, but it's very gratifying and rewarding if you can be fortunate enough to stay off of the wall and do well."