Petty: '07 Chase would be better with different duel

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- The King is not all that impressed by the current duel being waged by two of the crown princes in stock car racing.

Talking with a small group of reporters prior to Saturday's Busch Series race at Phoenix International Raceway, Richard Petty said the battle between Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon as the 2007 Chase for the Nextel Cup winds down is not good for NASCAR.

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"It's not good for the sport, no," Petty said. "It's too cut-and-dried. You've got no [real] competition. You've got competition between two teams within the same team. That don't get it done as far as the general public.

"If one of these drivers happened to be [Dale] Earnhardt [Jr.], it might be a little different. When you get Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, they're the same. They've just got different names."

Heading into Sunday's Checker Auto Parts 500, the next-to-last event in the 10-race Chase to the Nextel Cup, Johnson leads Gordon by a mere 30 points in the driver standings. The season closes Nov. 18 with the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Miami, Fla.

But Petty, who is tied with the late Dale Earnhardt for the all-time lead with seven driving championships and owns a record 200 wins at the equivalent of the Cup level, said the closeness of the current Chase race isn't compelling enough. He insisted that it is so because Johnson and Gordon have similar personalities and drive for the same owner, Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports, making it difficult for the average fan to get very excited.

"If you had anybody else in the mix ... if they were from different personalities, different companies, or if you have a Ford running against a Chevrolet, or Toyota or Dodge, or if you had a Busch [brother] involved in it, [Matt] Kenseth, it would be better," Petty said. "It's just the personalities more than anything else. You ought to have something different in it, to where y'all [in the media] could get some different stories around it. You're going to the same place to get two stories now."

Petty said he wanted to make it clear that he isn't attempting to slight the talents or accomplishments of Gordon and Johnson, nor the impressive capabilities of the Hendrick Motorsports operation. He just thinks having the two of them duel for Chase supremacy, with no one else realistically within striking distance with two races to go, is, well, a little boring.

"There's nothing the matter with it from their standpoint," Petty said. "But to cause any excitement to the regular racing fan or to the fan that is not their fan, it's hard for an Earnhardt guy to get involved in it. Or Clint Bowyer's crowd. They're just tickled to death to be there. But if he was one of the two within 20 or 30 points of each other, y'all [in the media] would really have something to write about. And I think the fans, even if they weren't a Clint Bowyer fan, would probably pull for him. An Earnhardt fan could pull for him to beat the Hendrick deal.

"Now you've got nobody that can beat the Hendrick deal. So everybody is sort of down on them. But they're just doing a job. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing, what they're being paid to do, what their talent allows them to do."

At the same time, Petty insisted that Johnson and Gordon aren't really teammates in the true sense of the word.

"They're not cooperating. They happen to work for the same owner, but they're not teammates," Petty said. "It don't work that way because if Jeff wins the race, he ain't gonna give nothing to Jimmie. They ain't gonna split no money; they ain't gonna split no points. So they're in direct competition. They just happen to drive for the same owner.

"When you all talk about teammates per se, they just happen to work for the same team. They are independent contractors to that team. It ain't no split deal. Whoever wins the most money gets to take it home, so you don't have two guys who are really teammates.

"When they throw the green flag, there ain't no buddy system because they don't split nothing. They can split their time. They can go out and one pay for the meal one day and the other pay for it the next ... but they're in competition with one another."

For now, he also would argue, they are just a little too close in competition with one another for the sport's biggest prize. But he added that he has no doubt that, over time, this competition will come to pass and there will be others in a more diverse mix when it comes down to fighting for future championships.

"You go back through history," Petty said. "Junior Johnson won all the races, or Glen Wood won all the races, or Richard Petty won all the races. For a little while and then it changes. It goes up and down. It always has, and it always will. Football, baseball ... life. That's the way it is."