The King’s subjects
Richard Petty talks life, death and racing before another Daytona 500 readies to roll
Richard Petty is 86 years old now, and his seven NASCAR Cup championships and record 200 wins at the sport’s highest level came long ago.
But Petty is still going strong in Level Cross (pop. 3,694), which sits right in the middle of Charlotte and Raleigh. Petty still lives a stone’s throw from the house where he was born, and that house sits right next to the Richard Petty Museum, which houses an incredible amount of his stuff.
Nicknamed “The King” and a member of the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Petty retired from racing in 1992. Long before that he had already developed a signature look that is all his own: cowboy hat, black sunglasses, oversized belt buckle and cowboy boots. He showed up wearing exactly that to our interview.
Honestly, I would have been a little disappointed if he hadn’t.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. A longer version of this interview is available on the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast. The Petty podcast episode is sponsored by Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates.
Scott Fowler: We’re sitting in Level Cross, which is your hometown. You’ve never really left this place, right? Richard Petty:Right.
I was born in the house right beside the museum here, my brother and myself. We moved around to a few houses, but all of it right around here. My daddy started racing in 1949 — so this is the 75th anniversary of the Pettys and racing.
We took a little shed behind the house here, and that became the Pettys’ garage. That’s where all the race cars came out of, in the early years.
Now we do a lot of restoring of cars, old race cars or whatever. We work on a lot of new cars here. People want more horsepower. They want bigger tires, better suspension. If they want special paint jobs, we got that. So we’re still in business here.
SF: What has kept you in the Level Cross/Randleman area, when you could have lived anywhere in the world?
RP:
I never thought about going anywhere else. I was born here, raised here and this is home. And when we started racing and I worked on the cars — me and my brother (Maurice Petty, later inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame as a master engine builder) and Dale Inman (a future NASCAR Hall of Fame crew chief ) — it was a 24-hour job. Didn’t have time to go anywhere else. Had to live next door.
But even after that, I just never thought about going anywhere else, because this is home. This is where we grew up, and this is where I want to be when my toes turn up.
SF: Your dad, Lee Petty, was also a famous racer. How did he get started?
RP: My dad started in 1949 and ran the first race that NASCAR had, as far as new cars . ... He didn’t start building cars till 1946, when the war was over. My dad read in the paper that they was having a race in Charlotte, and I think they was paying $1,500 to win the thing. And he said, “Man, that looks like a good deal.”
So he borrows a car from some guys and decides to go race. And then the very first race, he turns the car over about halfway through the race. Something breaks. And so we thumbed a ride home with my uncle.
But my dad looked at it and said, “Look, this is something I can do. And they pay pretty good.” So he went out and bought a 1949 Plymouth for $990. He figured if he’d win a race, he could pay for that racecar. And so basically that’s where it all started.
SF: Your distinctive look — sunglasses, cowboy hats, boots — people know you everywhere. Where did all that come from?
RP:
It just happened. I’ve always wore sunglasses. My eyes are pretty sensitive to light. And Kyle Petty, my son, had a business called “Kyle Petty Boot Barn,” and he sold boots... Once he got that, I started wearing cowboy boots .... And (a sales rep for a hat company) came by one day to talk to him about wanting to start selling hats, too.
Kyle said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘Why don’t I just give you one of these hats, and you can wear it or give it to your dad and let him wear it.” Well, the first time I seen it, I fell in love with it. So I started wearing the hat.
Now I wear the hats for a while and then I autograph ‘em and we give ‘em away to people who auction them off for charity. So it works pretty good.
It didn’t come along as me sitting down and saying, “This is what I want to portray.” It just all come on a little at a time. And then, after a while, it got to be Richard Petty.
SF: What’s so special about Daytona?
RP:
Until 1959, we had Darlington, and Darlington was our Super Bowl. It was a big asphalt track, and they had a big 500-mile race . ... And then Daytona come along. Darlington was always second then.
Daytona was a big two-and-a-half mile track, banking of 32 or 33 degrees or something, and you could run wide open all the way around the racetrack. Nobody had ever seen anything like that.
And so we went down there in ‘59 and my dad was lucky enough to win the first race. And so after that, we always pointed toward Daytona ‘cause it was the first big race that we had (each year).
And if you win Daytona, you’re a winner all year long. In other words, they introduce you as the Daytona 500 champion. So, it has been a big, big deal in my career. By being lucky enough to win seven of ‘em (a NASCAR record), that always started the year off good.