A constant reminder of Richard Petty’s impact on NASCAR is his appearance at race events, weekend after weekend. His career as an owner and a driver spans more than 50 years. Through Petty’s remarkable driving records, championships, team ownership and superlative career in stock car racing, he truly is “The King.” For those who dare debate his supremacy and impact on the sport, members of King Richard’s court might well be pressed to send thee to the stockyards; for the king of NASCAR rules and his loyal subjects would have it no other way.
Petty’s path to racing was a foregone conclusion since he was a youngster running around the hills of Level Cross, N.C. His father, Lee Petty, was a cornerstone in the sport’s growth, winning championships in 1954, ‘58 and ‘59. Lee Petty was also the winner of the inaugural Daytona 500, in March 1959. (His son Richard placed 57th out of that field of 59, only completing 89 laps of the race.) Petty says he was about age 11 when he and his brother Maurice started working with their father, from cleaning cars to changing the oil on his machines; although, one can imagine Petty calling for a four-tire change as his mother pushed him around in the stroller on their Level Cross farm.
Through 1,184 starts in 35 years of racing, Petty’s accomplishments are vast. His amazing racing career is well documented with 200 victories, seven championships and a record seven Daytona 500 wins. With his father and Maurice, the Pettys ruled the golden era of NASCAR alongside their team, Petty Enterprises, a dominant force throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s. In 60 years of racing, Petty Enterprises built a record that has cemented the team as the most successful in NASCAR history, with 268 victories and 10 championships. However, despite decades of accomplishments, the racing empire has fallen and the reign of Petty Enterprises has passed, closing its doors earlier this year.
The final checkered flag waved on Petty’s driving career in 1992 after a season that was dedicated to his impact on the sport. The declining years of his driving career saw little of his former success; his final victory was in the 1984 Firecracker 500 at Daytona International Speedway. Today, he is still known as the greatest driver in NASCAR’s history. For Petty, looking back over his iconic career, there are no regrets.
“I was born at the right time, in the right place, with the right circumstances that put the necessary people around me to accomplish all that was done in that period of time,” explains Petty on his driving career. “If it would have been during another period of time, we would have been out of our element. The good Lord had it all lined up as if he were telling me ‘This is your time for you and your people to do your thing.’ It was one of those deals where I look back and say it was just meant to be at that time. We were fortunate to be in the middle of it.”
Racing has dominated Petty’s life, starting from when he ran around his father’s garage and continuing until today, when at the age of 72, Petty is still a fixture at the track every weekend.
“I never looked back,” says Petty of going to a race each weekend for the past 60 years. While some would cringe at the monotonous weekly routine, it was all that he knew. “Our deal was whatever happened on Sunday, we would get our people together during the week to get ready for the next Sunday. I would always look forward to what was coming up. It was just like getting up in the morning, combing your hair and eating your breakfast. That was our life.”
As Petty Enterprises closed its famous doors, a sigh of disappointment could almost be heard across the NASCAR community. While the end of an era had arrived, Petty took a road that he understands was a must to ensure his name’s survival among the sport’s greatest power teams.
“I’ve been around [the sport] since the start,” Petty explains of the rise and fall of racing teams. “In the beginning it was a pretty wide open field with just about anybody able to get in a stock car. Then in the mid-‘50s, we started having teams. Then a few started to dominate. It’s the same in any business. Wal-Mart dominates in their line of business. We have always had four or five teams that have won all of the races. It’s no different now. When I was racing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there was Petty Enterprises, Woods Brothers, Junior Johnson and Bud Moore. And [those teams] won 80 percent of the races, with just four cars, not four teams with four cars apiece. So as Bud Moore falls off, Hendrick comes in. Junior falls off and Gibbs comes in. But the new teams come in bigger and bigger. It is the same principle now as it always was. You are going to have four or five teams who dominate as a group. Somebody has always got to win.”
Coming to an end was perhaps harder on Petty than all of his supporters combined. However, the pain was lessened slightly after the team had joined with investment company Boston Ventures in 2008. The race shop moved from its original location in Level Cross to Concord, N.C., the home of many race teams. “We moved from [Level Cross] after 60 years to Concord when we merged with Boston Ventures,” Petty explains. “The biggest decision I’ve ever made in racing is moving out of Level Cross to join in with Boston Ventures.”
By the end of 2008, the race team had not tasted victory lane in almost 10 years and was starting to experience financial issues with the loss of several major sponsors. After longtime supporter General Mills announced their intention to swap teams–and Georgia Pacific had moved on several seasons earlier–it became clear that NASCAR fields would no longer be graced with the famed No. 43, the number that Petty had made so famous. While other longterm teams were crumbling under the weight of sponsorship and financial problems, the fate of Petty Enterprises and the name synonymous with racing seemed to be heading in the same direction.
With mergers and partnerships becoming the trend for race teams, Petty recognized the need to consider alternatives to remain both a mainstream team and competitive in the sport. This survival instinct would lead to a merger with Gillett Evernham Motorsports in January 2009 to form Richard Petty Motorsports.
“We’ve been at Level Cross, Petty Enterprises, for 60 years,” Petty explains regarding the merger. “We grew our business from the inside out. We had to go out to get help. Our competitors like Gibbs, Roush, Hendrick and Penske had all of these connections in business they had put together. A couple of those guys are billionaires. So they know people that know people. They were able to go out and bring in engineers and the big money that we didn’t have. Our map wasn’t as big as theirs and we became overshadowed by money.
“So we just decided if we wanted to survive and keep our people going then it was time to join the trend of what was unfolding. George [Gillett] was looking to expand his operation of two and a half cars and we had two cars so if we could join this together we could probably have four pretty good teams.
“I would have liked to have brought more of my people but they already had an organization and system that was working pretty good. They just wanted to expand the system, not with people but with more cars and knowledge. We came in and hopefully filled that bill.
“Everything is running good so far. We haven’t won any races yet but we are getting closer. Anytime you expand a business or join with somebody it is going to take a little time to get everything in line. So far I don’t think we have had disrupted a lot of things they had going. We had to learn their system, of course, but so far so good. We are headed in the right direction and going to get back into victory lane.”
The merger kept several key factors in the history of NASCAR alive. The Petty name would stay in the sport as the new team started racing under Richard Petty Motorsports. Also kept alive was the No. 43, with new Richard Petty Motorsports driver Reed Sorenson behind the wheel.
Throughout 60 years of involvement in the sport, Petty witnessed numerous changes that altered the direction of NASCAR. The “Car of Tomorrow” and team mergers have been recent changes, however a history lesson with Petty pinpoints other key moments.
What Petty sees as the “the big break” came in 1971. “When RJR got involved and started the cup series, that started us it was a professional thing. At that time we were running 45 to 50 races a year, three or four times a week, and thought it was professional event though it really wasn’t. They came in, cut it down to 30 to 35 races a year and made bigger races. They gave us advertisers all over the United Sates even though it was primarily a Southern sport. That was a big deal.”
The introduction of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) as NASCAR’s first major sponsor for the sport gave birth to the modern era. The deal brought with it the introduction of a structured racing schedule, eliminating the shorter and dirt track races for longer and more competitive events. Eventually television coverage was introduced through shortened update segments and sports news reviews. The winds shifted in 1979 when, for the first time, a complete Daytona 500 was seen live on air. “The next big deal was TV,” Petty said after the signing of RJR. “That, to the eyes of the world, made us a legitimate sport. That was the only thing we were missing.”
As the sport grew, so to did the need for financial support to help keep the teams running. Petty Enterprises was the first team to sign a major sponsorship deal that spearheaded team funding for years to come. “In 1972, we got STP, which was the first national sponsorship so they broke the ice on that,” Petty recalls of the change in the business side of NASCAR. “Again, it was a Southern sport but they started advertising in California, Wisconsin, Florida; it didn’t make any difference. That in turn brought in more sponsorship dollars.”
Petty has certainly seen a rise of the sport: from the days when he and his brother would work on their family car and drive it with their father to a track for a race, to today’s era, where multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals dominate team funding. With 75 million fans religiously following it, the country’s top spectator sport seems to have come a long way.
The debates are many. Issues include whether to make the sport more international with the introduction of foreign drivers; conducting races in different parts of the country versus keeping the sport at its roots; allowing the latest technology to keep making its way into the sport; and the levels of financial backing put into the sport and where to drawn the line. For somebody like Petty, who has seen it all when it comes to stock car racing, most of what occurs represents an evolution of fans and of the sport.
“I don’t know how it is going to come out,” says Petty on the sport’s evolving. “You have to figure that society is different. We are looking for new fans, so what are those fans looking for? The older fans are not going to the races anymore or are dying off, so we have to regenerate the sport to the fans. The fans that we had in 1970 would be bored to death watching one of the races that is exciting for fans today. It’s just because society is looking for different things today. Hopefully our racing organization will stay up with what people want today. It has to change.
“When we first started, NASCAR was in the racing business. We raced to race. But NASCAR, TV and the sport became so big that we have turned into an entertainment. We look at the sport from a racing perspective and [NASCAR] looks at it as a means of entertaining fans, so the real question is how to change the rules while making it entertaining, giving fans both aspects. I never looked at it that way. I only saw it as racing.”
Without question, Petty is an icon in the world of NASCAR and motorsports. Today, “The King” is still heavily involved through management and guidance at Richard Petty Motorsports. Many long-time fans of the sport will continue to proclaim to new fans the importance of knowing what made NASCAR what it is today.
Petty agrees, recently releasing an audio scrapbook (CD series) of his time spent in the sport. Throughout the audio series, Petty tells stories of the early years of racing and the different key moments in the sport and discusses events with some of the sport’s original superstars. “The history of what we did, the everyday stuff, that is what is on the CDs,” Petty explains. “It talks about a race every now and then, talks to Bobby Allison, Junior Johnson, David Pearson. It talks about us growing up together, going to school together, playing ball. It’s just a bull session of where we started and where we are now. It’s about where we’ve come in 60 years.” It’s a unique way to keep the history of the sport intact and teach newcomers its origins.
As each weekday draws closer to the weekend, Petty’s wife, Lynda, will watch her husband follow the same routine he has for 60 years, wondering when he will finally decide to stay home. As Petty says, “It’s all I know. She’s been doing that for a long time. She is ready for me to stay. It would change her if I were to stay home. She goes to the races some days. We live a pretty loose life and we have a lot of freedom. And that’s one thing that has held me here so much.”
Richard Petty Motorsports has kept the most formidable name in NASCAR alive. The name Petty is about as integral to NASCAR as left-hand turns and three-wide racing. The new team has ensured the Petty legacy will remain intact, for now; however, in years to come, The King himself hopes the name will conjure a pretty simple memory. “Everyone will remember Richard Petty in a different way. The big thing I hope is that they just remember. Not any specific things, just as long as they remember.”
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