Years ago, I was in the garage at Darlington Raceway chatting with David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough. All three are among the greatest racers in NASCAR history. All three had long since retired as drivers, but all three had only recently given up trying to be Cup Series team owners, the experience having crushed them all financially.

Yaborough said to me, "You are looking at three NASCAR dinosaurs."

Pearson laughed and replied, "But we're doing better than the dinosaurs because we're still here."

When I asked them what they'd figured out that the dinosaurs didn't, Allison explained, "We were smart enough to realize we were dinosaurs and got out of the damn way before we went extinct."

On Thursday afternoon in a Charlotte courthouse, another NASCAR dinosaur got out of t

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