Terry Labonte will run his final Sprint Cup race at Talladega
TALLADEGA, Ala. - Terry Labonte, one of NASCAR's most celebrated and long-running drivers, will close off his Sprint Cup career on Sunday at Talladega. The two-time champion ran 889 races over 37 years, notching 22 victories. He hasn't run a full season since 2004.
Labonte isn't quite Brett Favre or The Who in terms of retiring and then un-retiring, but he admitted he'd done a couple of doublebacks in his day.
"Of course, you know it’s only about the third time I’ve said this is gonna be my last race, but this is really gonna be the last one," he laughed at a Saturday press conference.
Why Talladega? Because of the anyone-can-win potential. "I’ve always looked forward to coming to Talladega," he said. "We have a couple of wins down here and it’s a track, as everybody knows, if you stay out of trouble and stay on the lead lap you’ve got an opportunity for a decent finish.”
Labonte's team had sought to honor his career with a car decorated with two of his more notable paint schemes, different on one side than the other. You can see both sides right here:
Problem is, NASCAR doesn't permit cars to have two different paint schemes on different sides of the car because of the difficulty spotters may have in identifying the car. So NASCAR told Labonte's team to change the decal, but allowed him to run it during qualifying. He ended up qualifying ninth.
What does the future hold for Labonte? "I’ll probably come to a few races, that’s for sure," he said. "Sometimes I go to the race tracks and don’t come in the garage area ... You’ll probably see me around every now and then, but not a whole lot.”
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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