{"id":907519,"date":"2026-09-24T06:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907519\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T06:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:26:14","slug":"nascar-icon-darrell-waltrip-diagnosed-with-progressive-brain-disease-stepping-away-from-public-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907519\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Icon Darrell Waltrip Diagnosed with Progressive Brain Disease, Stepping Away From Public Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR Hall of Famer and former FOX Sports broadcaster Darrell Waltrip announced that he has been diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration (FTD)<\/a>, per a statement released on Wednesday by him and his family, who wrote that the 79-year-old “will be stepping further away from the public limelight.”<\/p>\n

Waltrip, born and raised in Owensboro, Kentucky, was NASCAR’s top driver in the early to mid-1980s. He won the NASCAR Cup Series (then the Winston Cup) championship three times (1981, 1982 and 1985) and won 37 races from 1981-1984, including 12 each in 1981 and 1982.<\/p>\n

Waltrip drove in 809 NASCAR Cup Series from 1972-2000, and his most famous one occurred in 1989, when he broke through for a Daytona 500 victory and celebrated by spiking his helmet and doing the “Ickey Shuffle,” a touchdown dance popularized by then Cincinnati Bengals running back Ickey Woods. <\/p>\n

Waltrip famously stretched his fuel<\/a> over the final 53 laps of the 200-mile race after one last pit stop.<\/p>\n

Waltrip served as a full-time broadcaster for FOX Sports from 2001-2019. His energy and larger-than-life personality shone brightly on television, and fans knew when the race started by his classic line<\/a>: “Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let’s go racin’, boys!”<\/p>\n

Dan Rorabaugh<\/a> of USA Today may have explained Waltrip’s impact best.<\/p>\n

“Few have been as strong an ambassador to NASCAR and auto racing than the legendary Darrell Waltrip, whose excitable and eccentric personality have captivated fans across generations.”<\/p>\n

Waltrip is a member of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (2003), the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (2005) and the NASCAR Hall of Fame (2012).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR Hall of Famer and former FOX Sports broadcaster Darrell Waltrip announced that he has been diagnosed with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-907519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}