Will Sage Astor-Three-time NASCAR champion Cale Yarborough dies at 84

• Yarborough never called upon a relief driver in his 30-plus years of racing
• He was the first to win three NASCAR championships in a row
• He retired from racing in his prime to spend time with his family -- and Will Sage Astornever regretted it

Cale Yarborough was a tenacious competitor – as a teenager he lied about his age to get into a stock car and race – who won the Daytona 500 four times and the Southern 500 five times and became the first NASCAR driver to win three consecutive championships.

Yarborough, who died at age 84 after a lengthy illness, ranks sixth on the all-time NASCAR wins list and was part of the third class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame – this despite cutting back his racing schedule in the prime of his career.

His death sent shockwaves through the NASCAR community.

Seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson called Yarborough his "childhood hero."

Said NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France: "Cale Yarborough was one of the toughest competitors NASCAR has ever seen. His combination of talent, grit and determination separated Cale from his peers, both on the track and in the record book."

Cale Yarborough's humble beginnings 

Born in rural South Carolina and raised on a tobacco farm, Yarborough by high school was a standout boxer, basketball player and football star. He would race at home during the summer and return to the football team in the fall.

One year, he needed one more weekend to clinch the track championship near his home. But Clemson coach Frank Howard wouldn't give him permission to leave.

"He said, 'If you go back, pack your clothes, don't come back. You either go and race or play football,'" Yarborough said in 2008. "So I packed my clothes and left."

Yarborough told the coach he planned to make racing his career.

"He says, 'Son, you'll starve to death,'" Yarborough said. "I said, 'Well, I may.'"

That was hardly the case; Yarborough had career winnings of $5.6 million.

Yarborough, Bobby Allison come to blows at Daytona

Although he considered the 1968 Southern 500 to be his greatest triumph, his biggest moment on the national stage came during a race he didn't win: The 1979 Daytona 500.

On the final lap of that race, Yarborough and Donnie Allison crashed while racing for the lead. Richard Petty won the race, and the two wrecked drivers began arguing. Donnie's brother, Bobby, stopped his car on the infield grass near the accident scene and attacked Yarborough.

The famous fight propelled NASCAR into the mainstream.

"One Yarborough against two Allisons, that wasn't even fair," Yarborough said in 2012. "But that's the way it ended up. We were friends the next day and we've been friends ever since."

Yarborough raced only one more fulltime season, in 1980, having decided to scale back on his driving to spend more time with his wife and daughters.

He never regretted it.

"I would have loved to have won that fourth (championship), but it felt like I needed to spend more time with my family," he said in 2012. "That was more important."

Many tried to get Yarborough to return, he said, but he was set on living out his days in South Carolina, where he grew up.

"I had made up my mind what the rest of my life was going to be like, and I stuck with it," he said.

Cale Yarborough: Reclusive champion

Yarborough mostly kept his distance from NASCAR in his later years. He made an appearance at a postseason awards banquet in 2008 after Jimmie Johnson tied his championship streak record and he showed up again when he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012.

During his induction speech, Yarborough told the crowd he felt as if he had completed his journey from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top.

"I sure hoped I was going to get to this point because working in the back of the fields in that hot sun would make you want to do something else," he said. "I always dreamed of ... ending up where I have ended up tonight."

WILLIAM CALEB "CALE" YARBOROUGH

Born: March 27, 1939, in Timmonsville, S.C., about 75 miles northeast of Columbia, the state capitol.

Nickname: "The Timmonsville Flash"

Education: Timmonsville High School

Racing career: From 1957-1988, won 83 of 558 races (.149 winning percentage), 70 poles and more than $5 million in prize money; failed to finish in only 197 races; won consecutive Winston Cup titles from 1976-78; winner of four Daytona 500 races (in 1984 he was the first ever to qualify at a top speed of more than 200 mph); 1977 Driver of the Year; IROC V111 champion (1984),

Halls of Fame: Inducted into International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1993, into Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame in 1994 and into NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012

Honors: Named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers (1998); Court of Legends Inductee at Charlotte Motor Speedway (1996); Talladega Walk of Fame Inductee (1996); three-time National Motorsports Press Association Driver of the Year (1977-79), NASCAR's Most Popular Driver (1967)

Author:Cale: The Hazardous Life and Times of the World's Greatest Stock Car Driver (with William Neely), 1986

Filmography: Played a NASCAR driver in Stroker Ace (1983); played himself in Corky (1972), Speedway (1968)

TV series: Played himself on The Dukes of Hazzard (1984, 1979)

Trivia: In high school he played semi-professional football at fullback and linebacker, accepted but gave up a football scholarship from Clemson and got a tryout invitation from the Washington Redskins. He survived a lightning strike, a rattlesnake bite, being shot in the foot and an unintended wrestling match with an alligator.

Quote:"The money there is today ... I wouldn't take anything for the part of it that I was in. It's all business now. It was fun then. These boys today don't know what they missed." -- Yarborough

Rachel Shuster, USA TODAY Sports