Dodge Charger Driver Quotes from Daytona

Friday, Feb. 18, 2005
Daytona International Speedway.
Daytona 500 Advance Material


RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

COMMENT ON PROGRESS WITH YOUR BACKUP CAR "The car is good. I'm pretty
impressed. We're taking it one step at a time. I stopped practice a
little early. We'll run the session tomorrow and it'll give us time to
sit down and think about the changes we want to make between now and
then. We've got a left-front fender rub. We've got to reshape the left
front fender, put a windshield in it and things like that. I feel good
about Sunday. I really think we're going to have a great day. This
Charger doesn't have as much straightaway speed as the one we wrecked
yesterday, but it runs better through the corners. It's going to be all
about handling. I don't think the fastest car is going to win. It's
going to be the best handling car."
 
DID THE DEI CARS SURPRISE YOU IN THE DUELS AND WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO
DRAFT WITH SUNDAY? "They proved they could work their way to the front.
I'd like to draft with the whole field, anybody who wants to stay
patient, but you can't really do that. The cars are slipping and sliding
so much you can't expect the cars to stay planted on you. During my
whole career, and it's a little ironic I guess, but Mark Martin has been
the best doing that with me. Mark and I haven't talked about this being
our last 500, but I'm sure we will."
 
SOME PEOPLE THINK YOU'LL BE BACK HERE FOR THE 2006 DAYTONA 500. ARE THEY
RIGHT? "They're wrong. I got in trouble with my wife waffling around the
other day. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to stay on the
path."

WAS THAT REALLY THE HARDEST HIT YOU'VE EVER HAD YESTERDAY? "It was 41
Gs. The one that knocked me in the air was like getting hit in the butt
with a rubber ball. It shoved up underneath me and lifted me up. That
first head-on hit with Harvick is the one that about knocked my lights
out. That was the very hardest of my life. I've never in my life hit
head-on, never. You flip and crash, but I've never hit head-on."

COMMENT ON MOVING TO THE REAR OF THE FIELD FOR THE START OF THE 500 "I
don't think that's going to mean anything. It's so easy to get to the
front with these restrictor-plate cars. I told my guys that we've just
got to have a good handling car. What I learned in the Shootout was that
I had a tight car. Then we ran the other car in the 150 and made a lot
of changes and it was better. It still wasn't enough. Everything we
learned in the 150 we put more yet in this car and I went out this
morning and it felt great. We ran 28 laps and it felt real good. Now
we're going to go a little bit further yet and try to get more downforce
on the front end. I'm going for the handling instead of the speed right
now."

KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge Charger)


COMMENT ON PROGRESS AT PETTY ENTERPRISES "I've said it before because
I've talked to some of you guys. Ray's engines have been the biggest
step forward for us. Obviously the Charger was big. When we started with
the Charger this year, Ray dedicated seven or eight people on working
with the Charger basically 12-14 months ago. We chimed in and put three
or four guys from our shop in the mix, so Ray's guys and our guys worked
really close together with Dodge trying to say, 'OK, this was the
Intrepid, this is the Charger. Keep the body lines so you see it's a
Dodge with the grille, plus make it so it's a nice racecar that's more
of a downforce racecar than a speedway racecar.' We really wanted to
focus on making it a good balanced racecar. Then coming on board this
year with Ray's engines, we always felt like we had a legitimate
speedway program, but we just haven't been able to show it the past
three or four years with John Andretti driving the car or Jeff Green
driving the car or myself. I think coming down here and posting a speed
that was in the top 15 overall with Ray's engines in our cars, that was
a big step for us. I think from that respect, the engine combination
will make us more competitive as we go through the year. The Charger is
new, so we've got to learn that and that will be a little bit different,
but working closer with Ray and Dodge, hopefully the learning curve will
be accelerated a little bit."

IS THIS THE YEAR A PETTY WILL RETURN TO VICTORY LANE AT DAYTONA? "No, I
wouldn't go that far. That's what we come down here for. That's what
everybody comes down here for. That's the best part about being at
Daytona, I don't care what anybody says. You can take all the junk that
goes on down here, but the best part about being at Daytona is it's a
white sheet of paper. Nobody has done anything. Even after qualifying
and the qualifying races, it doesn't matter until we run the 500. We can
talk about everything that happened yesterday, but come Tuesday or
Wednesday no one will be talking about the Duel races. They'll be
talking about the 500. That's just the way it is. That's what it's all
about. We struggled last year. We struggled the last couple of years as
everyone knows. We ended up 32nd and 35th in points. We didn't have a
lot of strong runs. We had one top 10 through all of Petty Enterprises
last year. To come down here and think you're going to bust everybody in
the biggest race of the season is a little bit unrealistic. You can
think we can make a step forward and come down here and run in the top
20. We can come down here and run in the top 15. You come to win, don't
get me wrong, but I think we'd be satisfied leaving here in the top 15."

HOW MUCH BETTER IS THE TEAM WITH EVERNHAM MOTORS? "To put a percentage
on it, I'm going to have to say we're 10 million percent. If you go back
and look, and this is just one race, but I think what Evernham
Motorsports has done and what Evernham engines has done, looking at our
test stuff we had at Vegas, California and here, we're head and
shoulders above where we were at. The stuff we had before, in 2002, we
felt like we made the switch from in-house engines to out-sourcing
engines and it was a good move. It worked for us good. It's not that it
got a lot worse. It just flat-lined, and in this sport if you flat line,
you just die. We flat-lined with our engine development the past two or
three years. Ray's stuff continues to go up. Even since we started
dealing with him last year, he's gone through two or three iterations of
engines and advanced that thing from when we tested to when we came back
down here and tested. The big thing for us is there's constant
innovation going on with Ray and Dodge and now we're part of that. I
think from that perspective now we've got to go back and now we've got a
new yardstick or barometer to measure ourselves off of. When we go to
California or Vegas for come here, we've got to be as good as the 19 and
9. If we're not, we've got to go back to our shop and work on the cars
because it's not because of the engines. It's more because of the teams
or cars or people or drivers. It gives us a better evaluation of where
we are as a team."

HAS YOUR RECENT SUCCESS GIVEN YOU A FEELING OF RE-INVIGORATION? "No, I
don't think it gives you a feeling of re-invigoration. Everybody is
invigorated when they come to Daytona, even you guys when you get here
the first day. By the third day it's like 'when's this going to be over
with?' And believe me, we're the same way. The new year gives you that
invigoration. For us this year, looking at the Charger and having that
nameplate - it's a lot cooler telling someone you drive the Charger
instead of the Intrepid. No knock on the Intreipd, but the Charger is a
nameplate that's won a ton of races here in this arena. That's an
established nameplate, so having the Charger and having all Dodge put
behind that the last 12 or 14 months.... Then you look at the engine
stuff and judging off what Ray's cars did last year and the year before
and if you watch how that team has built itself, the engine has been a
big part of that. We had a lot of unanswered questions going into last
year and we never found an answer to any of them. This year, I think we
have a lot of plusses that are already answered. We know what our engine
program is. We know where our car stuff is. I think we're in a lot
better position to move forward this year than we were last  year."

IS BUMP DRAFTING NECESSARY? "I think it is absolutely, positively
idiotic.  Period. End of conversation. At 180 mph whether you're running
in a straight line or you're running in the corner, you shouldn't be
running into people. We should be better drivers than to run into each
other. Let's go back 10-15-20 years, who heard of bump drafting? People
raced each other clean. That was the biggest thing about these guys and 

about those drivers. If you talked to Richard Petty or Bobby Allison
about racing at Daytona and stuff, the one word they always brought up
was respect. They respected each other. They respected each other's
ability. They respected each other's equipment. They respected the speed
they were running at. What we don't have here, I don't think, and this
is from an old guy's perspective, you don't have the respect of
equipment. You don't have the respect of each other and you don't have
the respect of the space that's yours on the racetrack. That's not your
space anymore. That can be anybody's space. All they've got to do is
knock you out of the way. I think we saw that in the 150s. You've seen
it down here for so long. The restrictor-plate, maybe, you can say
contributes to that, but you're still the guy sitting in there with your
foot on the accelerator and hanging onto  the steering wheel. You don't
necessarily have to run into that guy to get him by the guy in front of
you. It's going to take a little bit longer to get that guy around the
guy in front of you if you're drafting with him, but you don't have to
just knock him by or you don't have to just knock the guy out of the
way. The simplest thing, if you guys walk around out here today and look
at the front bumpers and rear bumpers in these cars, and then go to
California and look at the bumpers in these cars, we run more bumpers
here than we do at Martinsville. We run more metal in the front end and
more metal in the rear of the car here than we do at a place like
Martinsville. Why? I don't understand that.

"Bump drafting is something that has started that the younger drivers
and people have watched it on TV and they believe Benny Parsons and
Darrell Waltrip and all the guys that write about it and talk about it.
They believe it's part of the sport, but it doesn't necessarily have to
be a part of the sport."

DOES THE SAME THING APPLY FOR BLOCKING? "Ten years ago we didn't have
out of bounds, either. Let's go back to the infamous 1979 race. That was
blocking at its best. The only thing that made it spectacular was that
one of them decided they needed to be out in the grass to try to get
around him. Then we had the big wreck with Cale and Donnie, so blocking
has always been here. It's always been an accepted practice to some
degree that the leader of the race is the leader of the race. He can do
basically what he wants to. It's been that way in all types of racing.
It doesn't make any difference. You need to go and look at what some
other sports do. Some other motorsports now have the blocking police up
there. They allow you three blocks a race and that's it and then they
start penalizing you. I think blocking is fair. I don't have a problem
with blocking."

WHAT'S THE CORRELATION BETWEEN WINNING THE DAYTONA 500 AND HAVING A
GREAT CAREER? I think it's what the press makes out of it. Sorry. Nobody
can sit here and say if Mark Martin doesn't win the 500 he's not been
one of the greatest racecar drivers ever to come through this series. Even if Mark
Martin never wins a championship here, nobody can say Mark Martin's not
a great champion. You can't take that away from Mark Martin. He's a
phenomenal guy, and Rusty is the same way. I don't think it takes away
from their resume by any stretch of the imagination. I'd rather be
sitting in Rusty's position or Mark's position and having run second,
having won 50 or 60 races than having won one or two races in my
lifetime and Daytona was it. That's big. I'm not belittling Daytona by
any stretch, but Daytona is our crown, but there's a lot of great
football players or basketball players that never make it to the
championship game and never get that ring. I don't think it diminishes
from triple doubles or how many touchdown passes they threw in their
career or how many yards they ran for. It doesn't take away from that.
It's just another statistic. If you come here 100 times and don't win,
you just don't win. It's just not your place. This place has not been
kind to Mark Martin by any stretch of the imagination, and it's not been
kind to Rusty, either. To get through this race and move on, I don't see
it as a negative at all."

 

COMMENT ON DRIVER MEDIA TRAINING "The problem is the sport obviously
changes because of sponsors. Sponsors want you to sit there and say
Georgia-Pacific, Coca-Cola, General Mills - dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
They want to get their point across. I think a lot of times the guys are
talking and they've got that in the back of their mind because that is
media training. I'm not sure it's media training that's the issue or
media handling. I mean that in the kindest way possible to any PR rep
out there, but whether it's Mulhern or whoever it may be, I have been
doing this long enough where you guys should feel comfortable just
walking up on my truck. I've got no problem with you walking up on my
truck if you've got a question because I'm going to tell you 'I ain't
got time for you right now' or I'm going to say, 'come on in and sit
down and let's talk.' There's so much going on out there right now that
you guys are kept at arms distance, so now you don't feel a connection
to that driver. If I feel a connection to you and I feel like I wouldn't
mind going to dinner with you guys or sitting down and doing this or
whatever, then I'm going to be more open with you. If there's a cushion
between us, then I'm not going to be as open with you. I think that's
the big thing where this sport has gotten to a point where there's a
buffer between you guys and what's really going on in the garage area
and that buffer, there's a filter and whatever goes through the top side
of the filter before it gets to you it's homogenized. It's monotone.
That's the spill. That's our statement. We're standing behind it. The
only time you get true statements is like yesterday when accidents
happen and everybody is stupid and everybody is an idiot and we
shouldn't be out there and we need IQ tests for drivers. That's when you
get the honest answers, but any other time you don't get it. I'm not
sure that's bad for this sport, 

and I'm not sure it's good for the sport. I just think the sport is
going through a transition period where over the last eight or 10 years
you have that.

"Some of you guys who go back a long way when my father and those guys
raced, then really the pressure room could have been as big as that room
over there (pointing to a small room) because only three or four guys
came down here to talk to Richard Petty or Bobby Allison or Cale
Yarborough. It was easy for Tom Higgins and Benny Phillips and guys like
that. It was simple for my father and those guys to get to really know
those reporters and have a relationship with those reporters. I don't
think now there's very many of you guys who have relationships with
drivers and feel that way. In some ways I think that's a bad thing. I do
think that connection has been broken."

 
WHY DON'T SOME OF THE DRIVERS HAVE RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER AND WHAT CAN
BE DONE ABOUT IT? "NASCAR can do nothing, and I don't think it's
NASCAR's job to do that. I think in a lot of ways it's the changing face
of the sport. This sport changes, and change is good for this sport. I
think it's really good, but in a lot ways what we're talking about with
some of the things going on is kinda like the NBA or NFL when everybody
started talking trash to each other. You never saw the old players talk
trash. If they did, they did it in such a subtle way that nobody knew
what was going on. You didn't see them strutting when they scored a
touchdown. That was a different time in those sports. It was a different
time in this sport 15-20 years ago. Now these guys, they've got to a
point where this part is almost like talking trash to some degree. You
can't teach respect. You have to go out there and earn it and gain it.
You either do or don't, and I don't think NASCAR can step in and say you
guys have got to get along. They can say that all day long, but that's
going to make you get along. If you watch, most of the guys who have
crashed really hard here drive this place totally different than the
guys who have never crashed at all here. Most of the guys who have been
on their roof at Talladega drive it different than guys who haven't.
That's the separating factor. It's not that NASCAR teaches you respect.
Maybe God teaches you respect at some point in time when you're sliding
on your roof. You say, 'maybe I didn't need to do that.' Maybe it's that
kind of thing."

 

WHY HAVE SO MANY GREAT DRIVERS NEVER BEEN ABLE TO WIN THE DAYTONA 500?
"I don't know. Some of those drivers have won at Talladega and some have
not won at either place. Some of them flat out don't like restrictor
plate racing and don't like coming here, and that's fine, too. Some of
them have been with the wrong teams at the wrong times. I think Roush's
lack of success plus success has fairly well been documented here. He
came here forever and couldn't run at all, none of the Roush cars could.
I think when you look at it it's circumstances. Look at my father and
Petty Enterprises, look at DEI and Childress, it's almost like a team
could dominate an era and when a team dominated for three or four years,
that takes some of the races out. If you go back and just add Petty
Enterprises, Earnhardt's stuff with Childress, add the DEI stuff in and
some of the Hendrick stuff in, even out of 50 races that only gives you
15 or 20 races that someone else could win. When you start looking at it
like that, there's just not been that many opportunities unless you've
been with some of those teams. That's the big thing when you look at the
bigger picture. Circumstances have kept them out of it, not driving
ability, circumstances."

 

REFLECT BACK ON WINNING THE ARCA RACE HERE "Of everything that's ever
happened, that's probably been the goofiest thing that's ever happened.
We came here with a Dodge Magnum. We had switched from Dodge to GM that
year. We came with a Dodge Magnum and I'd never been to a racetrack
before because my father wouldn't let me go. He brings me to Daytona and
says we're going to go test at Daytona. How smart can that be? The man
says, 'OK, we're not going to take you to Caraway.' That's six miles
away and it's a half-mile track. 'We're going to take you to Daytona.'
We qualify fourth or fifth and lead most of the race. I really shouldn't
have won the race. (Someone) hit a seagull on the backstretch, and
that's when you ran glass windows, and the windshield caved in and I
ended up beating whoever was running second at that time. It's been
pretty much down hill from then until now."

 

COMMENT ON THE WAY QUALIFYING WORKED OUT HERE "I don't understand it.
I'm going to be blatantly honest and say I don't understand how it all
worked out. We knew coming in the top 35 were in. Then 4 on speed and 4
racing in and how they chose the 4 on speed. I kinda thought I
understood the 4 on speed when John Andretti and Skinner and Leffler and
all those guys got in the other day. Then yesterday when they started
throwing stuff on the TV screen on who was in and who was out, I'm
thinking I don't understand any of it. Kerry is in if this guy does this
or that. Then you've got this guy that's in if this happens. Obviously a
more complicated mind than mine 

figured this thing out. I really don't know. If you go back for Robby
Gordon and teams like that with sponsors to come down here and work
without a net is really, really hard. It's hard to come to Daytona and
not have a net. For Robby to come down here and run like he did and
finish seventh and to go home is pretty heartbreaking. In the past if
you were in the top 14 or 15 you were in the race. It didn't work out
that way this time. I think it played out that way at a place like this.
I'm not saying right or wrong or whatever. When we get to other places
it won't be nearly as complicated."

 

COMMENT ON CHANGES AT DIS  "If you go to Chicago, Kansas, the LA market,
Texas, the recent racetracks that are built, there's a huge difference
in the way fans are handled and the way they are moved there's a huge
difference at those racetracks compared to Darlington or Martinsville or
the racetracks that were built 30 years ago. If you came to Daytona last
year, you'd look at this place and say, 'yeah, this place was built in
1958.' You come to Daytona this year and you say this place could have
been built in the last two or three years. I think it was a huge upgrade
for the place. At the same time, I think the one thing the sport has to
do, we talk about it's a fan friendly sport, it's a driver access deal.
I've got to halfway be honest and say that's a lot of BS. The drivers
are a long way from where the fans are now compared to where they were
10 years ago and especially compared to where they were 20 years ago.
So, how do we make the fans feel that they can be a part of the sport or
get closer to the sport without actually dropping them off in the garage
area. I think the Nextel Fan Zone here is a pretty cool process. Those
people standing on top of the roof and screaming and hollering, that's
OK. To have some clowns walking around to entertain the kids, that's
pretty cool. When you're seven or eight years old, you can only stare
are so many racecars before you get bored, no matter who they are. It
keeps the fans and it's interactive with the fans and it becomes a place
to come that's not just about the racecars. It's an event for the whole
family. If you're going to have that, then yeah, we're going to have to
have artichoke and spinach dip and we're going to have to have a little
bit of other things going on out here in the infield besides
Martinsville hotdogs and some of the other stuff. We're going to have to
spread some of that out. I think it's a ripple effect. Once something
moves in one direction other things come along with it. That's part of
it. To come to Daytona this year and look at the Speedway Club or 500
Club or whatever they call that, and to look at victory lane and the way
they've changed things, I think it's phenomenal. It looks like the Super
Bowl of racing now. It looks like a place that was designed last year
and not in 1958. I think that's good. That gives you where the sport is
headed and you'll get people who'll come and say 'Daytona is a clean
place. Martinsville is a clean place. It's not just some old race
place.' You'll at least get new fans who'll come give you a look now
whereas in the past you had the reputation of being a little bit
backwards in a lot of ways."

 

 DO YOU THINK THE DEI CARS ARE STILL THE CARS TO BEAT? "Yeah, but we
thought that coming in. I think they caught everybody off guard in the
Shootout that Junior didn't run as strong as he could have run. He got
up to fourth or fifth after he got his plugwires fixed, but then he
faltered. I think qualifying set some people back. They weren't quite
sure, but their cars draft really, really well. I still think the DEI
cars are tough, but I think the Hendrick cars are a leg up right now.
The 48 and 24, I think the 25 had some trouble on pit road, but I
thought Kyle Bush did a great job yesterday. I think the Hendrick cars
have matched DEI if not moved a little bit ahead, but they're still
going to be a factor."

 

WHAT WOULD YOU MISS MOST IF YOU WERE NOT RACING? "The two things I would
miss most if I was not in racing, the No. 1 thing would be the driving.
The No. 2 thing is the people. The people that work for Joe Gibbs and
Jack Roush, the people that work on racecars, those officials, you guys
coming around and just talking, just being around people who love this
sport or who want to be a part of this sport. That's the part I would
miss. I never had to come back in here and talk to you guys like this,
thumbs up. I've got no problem with that. I've got no problem with that
side of the sport. That's not for me. I like the people. When I broke my
leg in 1991 and sat out for six months, the thing I realized more than
anything else was I missed the guys that worked for Childress Racing. I
missed Will Lind and Chocolate Myers and being able to see them at the
race track. I missed not being able to see Steve Waid or Mike Mulhern. I
missed those guys. I wasn't at the racetrack and I just missed people.
The officials, as much grief as they give you sometimes, I missed those
people. As sad as it may sound, this is my family and my community. I
tell people I was born on June 1960 and came to my first race in July
1960 at Daytona. I've been coming to tracks ever since. That's all I
know. That's a sad statement in a lot of ways, and I'll admit that, but
this is all I know. That's the part I would miss more. You ask Rusty or
Mark, someone who grew up and had a civilian life  or an outside life
and then got in the sport, they might have a different answer, but for
me, that's the part for me. The driving part is the part I'd miss the
most. You really need a two-year retirement tour. You need one year to
do nothing but PR and the media and one year to do nothing but drive the
car. You'd fulfill what you'd need to do from the PR and media
standpoint and then you'd get to do what you want to do for one year. No
questions asked, don't come find me, I'm just going to drive this car
all year. There's going to be so much in Rusty's year and so much in
Mark's year. When they look back on it, it's going to be almost like my
father. When you look back he really didn't retire in 1992. It was '91.
That was his last normal year. I think for those guys 2004 will be their
last normal year."

 

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR ONLY NON-PETTYS TO DRIVE FOR PETTY ENTERPRISES?  "I
think you have to be. Obviously ours was not only a racing business but
also a family business. I use this example and I'll always use it
because of where I'm from. The people where I grew up in is a farm
community. They raise tobacco, cows, poultry. We're not an oddity there.
Having a fourth or fifth generation business is not an oddity because
most of these farms are fifth or sixth generation farms. If lightning
strikes or something happens you don't stop farming just because the
crops burn or cows die. For us, when Adam's accident happened, it stands
you up and you think about things. You look at it and say, 'this is all
we know and this is all we do.' From that moment on, from May 12, 2000
when Adam's accident happened, you look at it and say there's going to
come a time when we still have this business but one of us is not going
to be the lead person. My grandfather and father was. I came along and
Austin still works there. He can work there another 30-40 years in a
business standpoint and a leadership standpoint, but not as a driver.
That will change for us. When that changes it'll be different for us. We
always been proud to have Petty Enterprises and to have a Petty drive,
no matter how we ran on the racetrack, that was who we were. We'll
continue to be a part of the sport, but we've come to the realization
that that will happen. We've just got to put ourself in position so when
that does happen, working with Dodge, whoever we do put in the car has
that maybe more of the Petty philosophy of how they approach the sport,
how they approach the fans, how they approach the media. There are some
drivers out there now who probably wouldn't be a Petty driver, drivers
that are winning races. We've got to continue to stay true to who we
are."

 

HOW HARD WILL IT BE TO WALK AWAY FROM RACING THE CAR? "That's the part
that will be hard. You sit in that car and you feel like you control a
3,400-pound racecar and you can make it do things you want it to do. You
come out a race on Sunday and you were better than 42 other guys. That's
what it's all about. You can take the money out of the equation totally.
Money is a bad barometer to measure things off of because it constantly
changes. It changes from year to year, from decade to decade. It  just
changes. You always hear, 'if Babe Ruth were playing now he'd be making
so much money.' Guess what? He's not playing now. Nobody cares how much
he'd be making. If Richard Petty had done this, that's OK, but Richard
Petty had done this, that's OK, but Richard Petty did this over here. I
look at it a totally different way. There's so much in the sport right
now that you have to do as a driver that Cale Yarborough or Richard
Petty or Buddy Baker didn't have to do. They were happy to have a
million dollars a year to run their cars or $600,000 or $500,000 and
that's all the sponsor expected out of them to go run their racecar.
They didn't have to leave here Monday morning after the race and fly to
LA and do a two-hour appearance and then fly back and do one in Atlanta
on Tuesday and then go back to California to race. They didn't have to
do stuff like that. They didn't have to spend a day in make-up to do
commercials. They didn't have to do this or that. All they had to do was
drive a racecar. What happens to drivers now, and if you really talk to
'em, when they talk about getting burned out., they're not burned out on
the driving. They're not burned out on going around in circles and
working on the racecars. They're burned out on everything that goes
along with that part of it. When you look at it, we may be the last
group that makes it to 45 or 50 years old. There's going to be that rare
guy who comes along and is going to hang in there to that age. You're
always going to have that, but the majority will probably only stay in
the sport 15 years. They may make it to 40. It may be more in line with
the NBA, with the NFL, hockey because they will make enough money in
that time to sustain 'em, but at the same time, they're going to get
burned out on it. I'm not burned out on it and I've never been burned
out on it because this is all I've ever known. We may just be the last
generation of drivers that retired like my Father and Ned and all those
guys before them. When you look at it, we may be the last group that
makes it 20-30 years."

 

WHAT'S THE BEST LESSON YOUR FATHER EVER TAUGHT YOU? "The most important
thing is I'm from Level Cross, N.C., population 280. Hee Haw. That's
where I'm from and that's where I'm always going to be from. My values
and what I believe.... We grew up around farmers. I grew up playing
football at a school and we didn't have two or three practices a day
because so many kids played on the team that were farmers that sometimes
we'd have to go prime tobacco or go get up hay so those kids could come
practice in the afternoon. That's just the way it worked. The football
coach would say, 'OK, you're going to help them get up hay because we
need to practice this afternoon.' I think what I learned from that and
people in the community referred to my father as Richard. He was not
Richard Petty. He was Richard. He was only Richard Petty to the outside
world. In that community he was Richard. Because of that everybody
helped everybody. I think that's the one thing I got from my father and
I got from my parents and community. You're part of a bigger picture,
and  you're part of something that if your neighbor needs something you
help your neighbor. That's the way this sport has always been. Somebody
breaks a motor, somebody loans 'em a motor. Somebody falls out and they
give their tires to somebody else. Somebody needs a pit crew member,
he's over here working. That's the way this sport is and it's just
nurtured that from 44 years of growing up in this sport and that
community. The biggest thing I learned is you're part of something
bigger and it's important to be who you are and to help other people. I
think that's the biggest thing."