Remembering A NASCAR Legend · 2:30am Nov 11th, 2021
Today we lost Delma Cowart. If your first thought is 'who?' you probably haven't read Runnin' On Empty. For those of you reading 16, Delma served as the inspiration for Electric Slide's father, Sunshine Smiles.
Delma never had the name recognition of Richard Petty, Bill Elliott, or Jimmie Johnson. Needless to say, he also didn't have the success of those three either. Dale Earnhardt, he wasn't. He was, however, the clown prince of auto racing.
Truth be told Delma failed to qualify for more Cup races than he made the field for. That's where the legend part comes in. You have to admire a driver who goes out there with a budget of zero (coincidentally, also his car number as well as his career wins total). A driver who competed in the Daytona 500 without ever winning so much as a local dirt track race (that's right, that goose egg in the career win total isn't just NASCAR, that's all levels of racing). A driver who maxed out his credit card to go to Indianapolis to attempt to qualify for the inaugural Brickyard 400... only to blow his only engine on the first turn of his first practice lap. A driver who's most well-known quote is, "I ain't never won a race, though I ain't lost a party."
That was truth in advertising. Upon qualifying for the 1992 Daytona 500 on Thursday, Delma left the speedway to throw a 'I qualified for the Daytona 500' party and didn't return to the track until Sunday morning just in time for the race. If ever there was a human equivalent of Pinkie Pie, it was Delma Cowart. Delma had something most of today's drivers lack: personality. Delma had so much personality that as late as 2018 he still rated a mention from the broadcast team during a race at Talladega, a full twenty years after his last race.
Some of Cowart's quotes:
"I ain't never won a race, though I ain't lost a party."
"The Lord watches over idiots and drunks. So, I had 'em covered on both ends."
"I'm a dinosaur. There ain't no room for guys like me no more. To me, racing was a hobby. Now, you gotta have money."
"Nothin' from nothin' ain't nothin'."
"My kind of race fans are rednecks, and I consider myself the king of the rednecks."
It's hard to fault that last statement. Legends come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it's perseverance in the face of repeated failures that defines a legend. Delma was the ultimate underdog, so much so that he liked to joke that his odds of winning were the same as his car number (#0). How many people dream of racing the Daytona 500? How many actually go out and make it happen? Delma competed in the Great American Race four times with a best finish of 25th. That's four more Daytona 500s than I'll ever compete in. Unless Jeff Gordon is secretly a brony, that's probably four more Daytona 500s than anyone out there reading this.
Rest in peace, Delma.
Ah, my condolences. He sounds like he was quite a character, though I don't think I'd heard of him before.