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Petty family has slipped off pace
Pettys hope to get back into Victory Lane
Date published: 2/24/2006
By JIM McCONNELL In the pantheon of motorsports legends, the name Petty is synonymous with greatness. Family patriarch Lee Petty established a standard of excellence during NASCAR's infancy. He finished 17th in the fledgling organization's first race on June 19, 1949, and went on to win 46 races and three series championships. His son, Richard, took winning to another level. "The King" piloted the famed red-and-light blue No. 43 car to 127 career poles, a record 200 Winston Cup race victories and seven points titles. But at some point after Richard Petty won his final race on July 4, 1984, at Daytona, the Petty family lost the map to Victory Lane. Richard's son, Kyle, has won 18 races in his NASCAR career while dealing gracefully with the enormous pressure of filling his father's shoes. In the last 22 years, however, Petty Enterprises has won just three races on NASCAR's top national series. With the passing of each subpar season, the emergence of powerhouse operations Hendrick, Roush, Penske and Gibbs threatened to do the unthinkable: render the Pettys irrelevant as a legitimate NASCAR competitor. "We lost a lot of deals when the big corporations came in," Richard Petty recalled last Friday at Daytona International Speedway. "We don't have anything other than the racing business. These other people came in and they've got things beyond racing. They know so many people in so many walks of life that they can tap into. That makes them a stronger team even though we've got the same amount of money." Always a straight shooter, Richard Petty hasn't tried to duck responsibility for Petty Enterprises' struggles. He admitted that he "lost the edge" in the mid-1980s, and also acknowledged that he was too slow to adjust when NASCAR evolved beyond its regional Southern roots. "We always did everything in the backyard and we were fairly successful with the thing. Then it started being a bigger and bigger business--bringing more people in, more money, more technology," Petty said. "We still sat there in the backyard. "By the time we got ready to do something about it, we were so far behind on our money and our engineering and all that stuff, it's just taken a little time to get it going."
Date published: 2/24/2006
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