NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip revealed Thursday that the 2019 NASCAR season would be his last for NASCAR on FOX. As a result, his last race will be the June 23 road-course race at Sonoma Raceway before NBC takes over broadcasting duties for the second half of the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.
“I could’ve waited until Charlotte or somewhere else down the road, but it’s been hanging over my head,” Waltrip told The Tennessean newspaper. “I just wanted to clear the air, let people know what my plans are and then other people can make plans accordingly. Like who’s going to take my place or is somebody going to take my place?”
The 2019 season is Waltrip's 19th with NASCAR on FOX. After retiring from the Cup Series as a driver at the end of the 2000 season, he became one of the founding members of the NASCAR on FOX team when the FOX network began broadcasting NASCAR races at the start of the 2001 season.
“My dream had been that I was going to retire in 2017, because I love 17,” Waltrip said. “Well, ’17 came, and I said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, bad decision, no, no, no. I’m not quite ready for that.’ A big wake-up call for me was when our first grandchild was born 14 months ago and I would come and go, and it was just like when I’d watched my girls grow up. They grew up at the racetrack, and they were grown and married before I hardly knew it.”
FOX is not ready to announce its broadcasting lineup for NASCAR races in 2020 and beyond, but when talk of Waltrip's impending retirement began about a week ago, Stewart-Haas Racing driver and 2014 Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick's name was in the rumor mill. Harvick, though, has disputed those rumors, claiming his is not retiring from driving at the end of the season.
“I’m not getting out of the race car,” Harvick told motorsport reporter Jeff Gluck and Gluck passed along on Twitter [@Jeff_Gluck]. “I feel really comfortable with where I’m at."
Waltrip was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame as part of its third class in 2012. In his Cup Series career, which spanned 1972 through 2000, included three championships in 1981, 1982 and 1985 and 84 race wins, tying him with fellow-NASCAR Hall of Famer Boby Allison for fourth on the all-time wins list.
