Petty Enterprises doesn't want sympathy, welfare (cont'd)

Regardless of where they're currently ranked -- or where they might be headed -- Petty knows that his family's operation has already carved a legacy that they can be proud of. Anything they earn off of that legacy is deserved, he added.

Again, he pointed out that there are profound differences between the competition and business sides of Nextel Cup racing, and that both play an important role in the overall scheme of any organization trying to make it in the sport.

"There should not be a welfare system in sports," Petty said. "When kids play baseball -- and I'm going to be very politically incorrect here -- they ought to keep score and there ought to be a winner and there ought to be a loser. You learn from losing. Kids learn from losing. You learn sportsmanship from losing. Anybody can be a good sport when they're a winner -- but when you get your butt kicked on a soccer field or a football field and you're 8 years old and you've got to walk down that line and shake everybody's hand, there's a life's lesson in that. You've got to keep score, so the competition is the most important part in sports. The competition and the winner and the loser is the most important part. That's what we do out here on Sunday. There are winners and losers.

"In the business world, there's a totally different set of rules obviously. In that set of rules, if I look at this as a business, there are certain things and I'm not going to call it welfare. Call it sweat equity. We put 60 years here, and we deserve something back for those 60 years. The Wood Brothers deserve something back for their 50 years. Look at Hendrick, who has been in it 25-30 years. There is a pecking order.

"They deserve more than what they have now, even though they're at the top of the heap. I still believe they deserve more than they have now, and I believe for the sport to have potential to grow has been built on the back of some of those guys. Call it what you want to call it, but I do think there's a different standard from the business side to the racing."