Lee Roy Yarbrough was also a key participant in one of the more interesting footnotes in NASCAR history. On February 26, 1965, Yarbrough teamed up with Dodge and legendary engine builder and car owner Ray Fox to set a new record at Daytona International Speedway. Driving a No. 3 Dodge Coronet with a supercharged and fuel-injected 426-cubic-inch Hemi engine, Yarbrough circled the fabled track at 181.818 mph. The pole winner for the Daytona 500 two weeks earlier had lapped the track 10 miles an hour slower at 171.151 mph.
Fox says Yarbrough could have set a faster time but track officials black-flagged him when they thought he blew the engine. Yarbrough shut it off between the third and fourth turn and coasted through the timing lights when he said the record. What the officials actually saw, says Fox, was tire smoke.
"It (the Hemi engine) had so much horsepower that he spun the wheels going down the backstretch," said Fox. "Of course, the tires had treads on 'em then and they weren't really very wide, and when they spun down the backstretch they smoked. They thought he blew an engine, so they put the red lights on him and he had to get off it. He ended up really getting off of it part way through the 3rd and 4th turns, so he threw the clutch in and coasted it all the way to the start/finish line and still run almost 182 mph."
It turned out to be a lucky break that track officials turned the red lights on before Yarbrough went hard into the fourth turn at Daytona. When Yarbrough returned to the pits, the crew found a 5/16-inch bolt in the left front tire.
