Bobby Labonte was born on May 9, 1964 in Corpus Christi, Texas and started driving quarter midgets at age 5. As he grew up, Labonte moved up to bigger and more powerfull cars and in 1978 he started driving go-karts. However this move would not last long as his family moved to North Carolina to help support his brother's racing career in Nascar Winston Cup. The younger Labonte helped out by sweeping the floor and other odd jobs at the garage. He was fired from the job after his brother left the team for Junior Johnson and his racing team.
"I was working on a race team, making money during the day and moonlighting by working on my late model stock car at night," Labonte said. "At the end of the year, Terry left the team to go drive for Junior Johnson. Hagan's people didn't think it would be a good idea for Terry's brother and father too, to be working on someone else's car so we got fired. I thought since I've got all this time on my hands, I might as well work on my own car and run some more races."1
So Labonte found emplyemnt elsewhere working for a car builder, while trying to race other places..
In 1990, he put together his first sponsorship with Goodmark Foods and ran the entire Busch Series 1991 would provide his first win at Bristol International Raceway and would also procide the championship. Also in 1991, he would race his first start at Dover Downs.
In 1992, Bobby continued to race in the Busch series and lost the championship by 3 points to Joe Nemechek, which is the closest point race in Busch Series history. Bill Davis choose Labonte to drive his #22 Ford Thunderbird after Jeff Gordon left him for Rick Hendrick. Through this partnership, he won his first pole at Richmond International Raceway.
In 1995, Bobby joined Joe Gibbs Racing and won 3 races, his first race was at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. His best year was 1999 when he one the championship. Labonte still is the only person to have won both the Busch Series and Winston Cup Series championship.
1. http://www.joegibbsracing.com/current_season/jgr_wc_18/wc_18_prhist.shtml
Other infromation came from www.nascar.com