By Mark Aumann, Turner Sports Interactive
January 10, 2003
9:19 AM EST (1419 GMT)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A one-year absence from the Daytona 500 failed to slow down Richard Petty. Neither did a finger broken in a pick-up football game.
Absent for a year because of NASCAR's ban on Chrysler's hemi engine and deciding to delay surgery on his injured finger, Petty picked up where he left off in 1964. He screamed to the pole with a speed of 175,163 mph, then lapped the field in the rain-abbreviated eighth annual Daytona 500, making him the first two-time winner of the event.
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"It was a real good feeling to come back and win after a year of just sitting around the pits," Petty said.
The race was red-flagged two laps shy of the scheduled distance, but it mattered little to the rest of the field, which only saw the tail lights of the Petty-blue Plymouth after lap 113.
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The average speed of the race was a blistering 160.927 mph; but because the race was called at 495 miles, it could not be declared a new record. In Victory Lane, Petty couldn't have cared less.
"I wasn't disappointed with not setting a record," Petty said. "In fact, I wouldn't have minded it if they had called it 10 laps earlier."
Petty said the track began to get slippery five laps before NASCAR waved the red flag. But before then, his strategy was simple: run hard and run out front.
"I ran harder here today than I ever have in my whole life," he said. "I was almost flat out all the way. At first I wasn't sure I could beat everybody, but as the race went along, I was pretty confident I could."
Cale Yarborough finished second, one lap in front of David Pearson and 1965 winner Fred Lorenzen.
This is one in a series of articles counting down to the 2003 Daytona 500.
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