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Richard makes some good points, being an old timer myself many of them I agree with.
A real good read for fans of all ages.
From the Orlando Sentinel.
Petty issues caution flag of his own
By Ed Hinton
Sentinel Staff Writer
September 1, 2002
DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The King is 65 now, and the Lady in Black is 52. They haven't danced in the decade since he retired.
Richard Petty and Darlington Raceway, faded as their names may be amidst modern NASCAR hoopla, remain at dusty pinnacles of NASCAR lore -- he the all-time winningest driver with 200 victories, she the hostess of NASCAR's oldest 500-mile race.
In the 53rd Southern 500 today, there'll be more Californians than Carolinians. Other drivers come from New York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Connecticut . . .
Among them, "There's a lack of respect for each other," Petty said here the other day. "The guys don't respect themselves, so they don't respect other people. Not all of them are that way. But it doesn't take but one or two to screw up the whole crowd."
It's no wonder, Petty reckons, that NASCAR officials felt compelled to warn competitors not to engage in fender-banging payback Sunday due to grudges that have festered recently.
"These guys are uptight all the time," Petty said. "They live uptight lives. They're thrown into uptight situations with the sponsors, and TV, and all the people.
"And when they get in a race car, their personality goes with them. You don't change a personality when you get in a car. If you're uptight when you get in a car, you're gonna be uptight driving."
For all the private jets drivers own, and all their million-dollar motor coaches in the infield, all their store bought methods of relaxing, "Their whole society is uptight."
And so to most, old Darlington is but a treacherous anachronism to be gotten through, put behind them on the frantic Winston Cup schedule. They seek mainly to escape the warped oval that was so unscientifically scraped out of corn fields, and banked haphazardly according to what looked right to bulldozer operators.
"They don't look at the history of Darlington," Petty said, "or the history of NASCAR, or who got them where they are."
Most would be nobodies now if it weren't for Richard Petty then. In the 1960s and '70s he was called the Arnold Palmer of his sport, lifting NASCAR out of the backwaters and boondocks and onto ABC's Wide World of Sports so that the mainstream public could get a first look.
The stars of Darlington as ABC discovered it were local boys: "Cale Yarborough came from right down the road here [nearby Timmonsville, S.C.]; David Pearson came from over yonder [Spartanburg, S.C., about 100 miles west]; I came from right up there [Level Cross, N.C., about 150 miles north].
"We came from grass roots. That was the way we lived. Every one of us grew up without a bathroom in the house."
To them, Darlington was Olympus.
"We were just thankful to get somewhere. These other guys start so much farther up than we even finished."
There might be no 500-mile races in NASCAR, to this day, if not for this place. The late Big Bill France, founder of NASCAR, was in 1949 opposed to 500-milers -- he feared stock cars were too crude to last that distance -- and planned to keep his series on half-mile tracks, running mainly 100-milers.
But a country visionary named Harold Brasington had seen the Indianapolis 500 and come home with a great notion: develop a hybrid of the high-banked dirt tracks of the South, and the huge, paved speedway at Indy.
For Labor Day 1950, Brasington scheduled a 500-mile race at Darlington, the first "superspeedway" (1.366 miles around) in the South. Big Bill was at NASCAR's crossroads: He must either seize the moment or be swept away by it. He agreed to send his cars and drivers into the first Southern 500.
Then came France's own Daytona International Speedway in 1959, big tracks at Charlotte and Atlanta in 1960, and now there are NASCAR superspeedways from New England to California.
Every one of them is a descendent of egg-shaped Darlington, which remains the trickiest oval in all of motor racing, even after several facelifts. No two of the four corners are the same.
Petty himself won only three times here, and so arguably this was the King's most difficult track. His career arch-rival, Pearson, whom Petty still calls the best NASCAR driver ever, won a record 10 times here, with his legendary patience.
It was at other tracks that the Petty-Pearson duel raged - 63 times they finished 1-2, with Pearson winning 33 and Petty 30. But through all this, "The only time we ever dented a fender with each other was that time at Daytona [in '76, when they wrecked coming to the checkered flag and Pearson won]. We respected each other."
Not that Petty didn't have his run-ins on the track. It was just that drivers took care of their own justice, right on the spot, and no big deal was made of it.
"Whatever it took," Petty recalled. "In other words, 'If you beat and bang on me, you ain't gonna finish the race.' But, see, then, you could take 'em around on the backstretch and crash 'em and nobody knew what happened. There was no TV. Now, you've got TV cameras running in the cars."
NASCAR's stance was largely laissez faire -- letting the drivers settle things among themselves. Petty and Bobby Allison wrecked each other repeatedly in a touring, cross-country feud that flared off and on through the late 1960s.
"Finally they [NASCAR officials] talked to us," Petty said. "They'd been getting the PR out of it, so they took advantage of it. Then after a while they said, 'Well, maybe we'd better say something.'
"Now, they're trying to be so politically correct that you can't even stick your tongue out at somebody."
What transformed NASCAR from cowboy code into active police force, Petty figures, was the career of Dale Earnhardt, who won here nine times.
When the Intimidator began his rise in the early '80s, "he never would mess with the old guys," Petty said. "He knew he couldn't get by with it. Then as all of us peeled off [retired, one by one], all these new people came in, so he intimidated them as they got there.
"Earnhardt got by with it. And it got more and more aggressive. He was the biggest name in NASCAR, so they had to be careful not to tear down his image, because his image was NASCAR's image. . . . Then, when he wasn't there anymore, they said, 'O.K., we're not gonna let any one person get away with this stuff. We've got TV coming in here, we've got all these sponsors, we've got to try to clean it up.'"
Still, because Earnhardt's style is what the current drivers saw coming in, "They try to emulate him. They say, 'That's the way we're gonna do it.'
"NASCAR then has to say, 'No.'"
But this place carries its own punishments. "You seen her slap me, didn't you?" even Earnhardt used to say, after his slightest miscue would send him skating over the black asphalt into the walls.
Even Earnhardt respected the Lady in Black.
And this bunch better.
A real good read for fans of all ages.
From the Orlando Sentinel.
Petty issues caution flag of his own
By Ed Hinton
Sentinel Staff Writer
September 1, 2002
DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The King is 65 now, and the Lady in Black is 52. They haven't danced in the decade since he retired.
Richard Petty and Darlington Raceway, faded as their names may be amidst modern NASCAR hoopla, remain at dusty pinnacles of NASCAR lore -- he the all-time winningest driver with 200 victories, she the hostess of NASCAR's oldest 500-mile race.
In the 53rd Southern 500 today, there'll be more Californians than Carolinians. Other drivers come from New York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Connecticut . . .
Among them, "There's a lack of respect for each other," Petty said here the other day. "The guys don't respect themselves, so they don't respect other people. Not all of them are that way. But it doesn't take but one or two to screw up the whole crowd."
It's no wonder, Petty reckons, that NASCAR officials felt compelled to warn competitors not to engage in fender-banging payback Sunday due to grudges that have festered recently.
"These guys are uptight all the time," Petty said. "They live uptight lives. They're thrown into uptight situations with the sponsors, and TV, and all the people.
"And when they get in a race car, their personality goes with them. You don't change a personality when you get in a car. If you're uptight when you get in a car, you're gonna be uptight driving."
For all the private jets drivers own, and all their million-dollar motor coaches in the infield, all their store bought methods of relaxing, "Their whole society is uptight."
And so to most, old Darlington is but a treacherous anachronism to be gotten through, put behind them on the frantic Winston Cup schedule. They seek mainly to escape the warped oval that was so unscientifically scraped out of corn fields, and banked haphazardly according to what looked right to bulldozer operators.
"They don't look at the history of Darlington," Petty said, "or the history of NASCAR, or who got them where they are."
Most would be nobodies now if it weren't for Richard Petty then. In the 1960s and '70s he was called the Arnold Palmer of his sport, lifting NASCAR out of the backwaters and boondocks and onto ABC's Wide World of Sports so that the mainstream public could get a first look.
The stars of Darlington as ABC discovered it were local boys: "Cale Yarborough came from right down the road here [nearby Timmonsville, S.C.]; David Pearson came from over yonder [Spartanburg, S.C., about 100 miles west]; I came from right up there [Level Cross, N.C., about 150 miles north].
"We came from grass roots. That was the way we lived. Every one of us grew up without a bathroom in the house."
To them, Darlington was Olympus.
"We were just thankful to get somewhere. These other guys start so much farther up than we even finished."
There might be no 500-mile races in NASCAR, to this day, if not for this place. The late Big Bill France, founder of NASCAR, was in 1949 opposed to 500-milers -- he feared stock cars were too crude to last that distance -- and planned to keep his series on half-mile tracks, running mainly 100-milers.
But a country visionary named Harold Brasington had seen the Indianapolis 500 and come home with a great notion: develop a hybrid of the high-banked dirt tracks of the South, and the huge, paved speedway at Indy.
For Labor Day 1950, Brasington scheduled a 500-mile race at Darlington, the first "superspeedway" (1.366 miles around) in the South. Big Bill was at NASCAR's crossroads: He must either seize the moment or be swept away by it. He agreed to send his cars and drivers into the first Southern 500.
Then came France's own Daytona International Speedway in 1959, big tracks at Charlotte and Atlanta in 1960, and now there are NASCAR superspeedways from New England to California.
Every one of them is a descendent of egg-shaped Darlington, which remains the trickiest oval in all of motor racing, even after several facelifts. No two of the four corners are the same.
Petty himself won only three times here, and so arguably this was the King's most difficult track. His career arch-rival, Pearson, whom Petty still calls the best NASCAR driver ever, won a record 10 times here, with his legendary patience.
It was at other tracks that the Petty-Pearson duel raged - 63 times they finished 1-2, with Pearson winning 33 and Petty 30. But through all this, "The only time we ever dented a fender with each other was that time at Daytona [in '76, when they wrecked coming to the checkered flag and Pearson won]. We respected each other."
Not that Petty didn't have his run-ins on the track. It was just that drivers took care of their own justice, right on the spot, and no big deal was made of it.
"Whatever it took," Petty recalled. "In other words, 'If you beat and bang on me, you ain't gonna finish the race.' But, see, then, you could take 'em around on the backstretch and crash 'em and nobody knew what happened. There was no TV. Now, you've got TV cameras running in the cars."
NASCAR's stance was largely laissez faire -- letting the drivers settle things among themselves. Petty and Bobby Allison wrecked each other repeatedly in a touring, cross-country feud that flared off and on through the late 1960s.
"Finally they [NASCAR officials] talked to us," Petty said. "They'd been getting the PR out of it, so they took advantage of it. Then after a while they said, 'Well, maybe we'd better say something.'
"Now, they're trying to be so politically correct that you can't even stick your tongue out at somebody."
What transformed NASCAR from cowboy code into active police force, Petty figures, was the career of Dale Earnhardt, who won here nine times.
When the Intimidator began his rise in the early '80s, "he never would mess with the old guys," Petty said. "He knew he couldn't get by with it. Then as all of us peeled off [retired, one by one], all these new people came in, so he intimidated them as they got there.
"Earnhardt got by with it. And it got more and more aggressive. He was the biggest name in NASCAR, so they had to be careful not to tear down his image, because his image was NASCAR's image. . . . Then, when he wasn't there anymore, they said, 'O.K., we're not gonna let any one person get away with this stuff. We've got TV coming in here, we've got all these sponsors, we've got to try to clean it up.'"
Still, because Earnhardt's style is what the current drivers saw coming in, "They try to emulate him. They say, 'That's the way we're gonna do it.'
"NASCAR then has to say, 'No.'"
But this place carries its own punishments. "You seen her slap me, didn't you?" even Earnhardt used to say, after his slightest miscue would send him skating over the black asphalt into the walls.
Even Earnhardt respected the Lady in Black.
And this bunch better.
