Petty Milestone: Richard's 200th win

Records are made to be broken. But in the world of NASCAR, one mind-boggling record in particular remains unassailable.

Twenty years ago this summer, on July 4, 1984, Richard Petty took to the track at Daytona in pursuit of his 200th victory.

Petty's Greatest Moments  •  Salute to Petty: Die-cast cars

Petty set the stage by winning No. 199 at Dover about a month before. From that point on, he was accompanied from race to race by an even larger media contingent than usual, which was saying something, given his status as NASCAR's biggest legend.

When he got to Daytona, Petty gave an audience that included fans, media and President Ronald Reagan a show they would never forget. President Reagan was new to the sport of stock car racing, and what he saw was a classic two-car duel between two of NASCAR's greatest champions that came down to the kind of beating and banging finish that only a NASCAR race could provide.

"When we got to Daytona, we were pretty good," Petty said, describing the performance of his No. 43 Plymouth Dodge. "And it wound up that Cale (Yarborough) and myself were superior to all the rest of the people -- it was just a two-car race, really. We were able to run, and we raced back and forth. He led, I led, I don't know if anybody else ever led the race or not. Through the middle and the latter part, it was just strictly a Cale Yarborough-Richard Petty show."

When that show came down to the final three laps, Petty and Yarborough were forced to swap more than the lead. Petty was ahead, but Yarborough was right on his bumper. Petty knew the race would ultimately come down to Yarborough's ability to perform a unique Daytona maneuver called a "slingshot" as Yarborough tried to use the aerodynamic boost from the line of cars drafting behind him to hurtle past Petty.

Then a wreck changed the timing of Yarborough's final charge.

"Just as we came down to the start-finish line, both of us saw somebody wrecking going in (Turn) 1," Petty explained. "So then we both did our last-lap deal two laps early. I think that if either of us had anything figured out, it went out the window, because we had to do it real quick. It was just a reaction deal."

"So we went into the first corner. Cale went real high and got a good run and started at me on the backstretch, passing me going in the corner. And when he did, he went in a little bit faster than what we'd been running, because he had a good draft, and he went high on the race track. I was able to still stay wide open and cut down beside him."

"We just ran side by side, and then we sort of leaned on each other a couple of times. He was trying to get me down, I was trying to get him up, and we were smokin' everything comin' down the front stretch. We were running up on some lap traffic, and we were running a little higher than what we usually ran, but I was trying to keep him from getting a running start.

"Anyhow, we beat and bashed, and I beat him by about three car-lengths."

Ironically, Petty never made it to Victory Lane. NASCAR had made special arrangements for the winner to stop at the finish line, then head up into the announcer's booth to talk to the President.

"He was awed by the whole deal," Petty remembered. "That we were running 200 miles an hour and beating each other, with smoke flying off the tires, all this stuff. His eyes were as big as silver dollars. He got excited by that part of it, because he'd never been to a race, didn't know what was going on. All of a sudden they have one of the better races -- it's coming down to the end, and they're beating and bashing each other without knocking each other out of the way. So he was awed by those things."

	Credit: Autostock

Petty knew the durability of his new record would prove to be just as awesome. During a late '90s interview, he noted that his closest rival was Dale Earnhardt, who had over 70 wins at the time, and Jeff Gordon was closing fast on his 50th career victory.

But Petty's vision of the future was prescient -- he realized that Earnhardt was nearing the end of his storied career, and the fact that teams were moving toward younger drivers would make him tough to catch.

"A lot of these boys, their careers aren't gonna be as long," he said. "I think the trend is getting to be the younger people. People are looking to bring in new drivers and get ten or fifteen years out of them and then go get somebody else.

"But to win 200 races, you've gotta win ten for twenty years. And nobody's gonna do that, you know what I mean?"