There from beginning, Petty has left his mark

Richard Petty was a month shy of his 12th birthday when he tagged along with father Lee, who entered a borrowed car in NASCAR's inaugural Cup race at the old Charlotte Speedway. Some 60 years later, the man they call the King remains at the forefront of the sport.

As a founding member of Petty Enterprises -- first as a mechanic, then a seven-time champion driver, and ultimately owner of the operation -- Petty left an indelible mark on stock-car racing. His 200 victories, including seven in the Daytona 500, is a feat that will likely never be equaled.

Hall of Fame bio

Very rarely in sports do you find the all-time greatest competitor double as the all-time greatest ambassador. But that's exactly what you get with Richard Petty. The mountain of records he holds -- most of which will never be broken -- is one thing. But what Petty brought to NASCAR off the track during and after his long career cannot be measured by any numerical figures.

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Q: How did you get your start in racing?

Petty: My dad ran the very first Cup race in 1949. That was our business. I grew up in the country, with a bunch of farms and stuff. All the guys used to play football, baseball, basketball. They'd go home and work on the farm, I'd go home and work on the racecar. So it was just an automatic deal until I got old enough to get in the car.

Q: Your life would have been a lot different had you stuck with your original career goal, which was to be a chief mechanic.

Petty: Basically when I was working on the car, I never thought about Daddy not driving. He was the driver and I worked on the car. I never thought about doing anything until later on in years. I started working around the car when I was like 11 years old and just started doing more and more and more on the car. Next thing you know, I'm doing most all of it. I never thought about driving the car until I was 18 or so and been around long enough, and seen these other guys coming in and I thought, "I might like to try this."

Anyhow, I was 21 when I got started. We went to Columbia, S.C., and ran a convertible race, which was the same car with the top cut off. I had never run a race at all, so me, Dale Inman and Red Myler loaded it up on a trailer and took it to Columbia. First time I had ever been around a racetrack with a helmet and a seatbelt, to run any fast laps at all. It was quite an experience, from that standpoint. The reason we went with a stock-car deal first was because that was the stuff we had and there was no reason to go out and buying and doing something different, because I already had all those cars.

Q: Over the years, is there a particular race or highlight in your career?

Petty: When I look back, I look at the ones I lost more than the ones I won, and said, "If I'd done something a little bit different, maybe we would have won those races." But then you turn around and look at some of the ones you won and say, "Man, look how lucky I was to win those races, where somebody else had trouble" or you messed up and got by with it. So after you run 1,100 races, it's kind of hard to separate them.

Q: You survived some pretty horrific accidents and serious injuries over the years.

Petty: Like anybody else, you go through life and different things happen to you over a period of time. Maybe I've put myself at more risk than the average guy, but I never looked at it as a risk. You know, if you broke your foot or broke your neck or broke some ribs, you just jumped back in the car and said, "OK, that's just part of growing up," I guess, if nothing else.

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Q: What's the biggest change you've seen in the sport?

Petty: When we first started, they were strictly, strictly stock cars. And now, they're strictly race cars. They might be shaped like a road car, but there's nothing in them, around them or on them that's road-car stuff. And that was money, which brought technology, which brought a different racecar and different periods. The fans are looking for something different than what we done 20, 30, 40 years ago. So we have to give them a different vehicle to give them a different show.

It just all grew up together, basically is what happened. Some of it was because we had to do it. Some of it was because we felt like the fans wanted to see something different and we didn't want to get stuck in a rut. So you wanted to make changes as you went along, and like I said, now they're all-around racecars.

Q: If you had a vote, which five nominees would you choose for the first Hall of Fame class?

Petty: I would look back and look at the standpoint of who started all this. I would look at Bill France Sr., I'd look at Red Byron, the first champion. I'd look at Lee Petty, because he was the first guy to sit down and say, "I can make a living out of this" and that's all he done. Raymond Parks, who owned a bunch of the cars that kept NASCAR in business in the early years. You know, people like that who got the sport started.

There's plenty to time for me, or Earnhardt, or Waltrip, you know, all these guys -- the Pearsons -- to go into the Hall of Fame. I would start from the ground up, and say, "Look, guys, this is what it's all about. These are the guys that started 60 years ago." They're the ones, as far as I'm concerned, that need to be put in first.

Q: What do you feel will be your legacy?

Petty: I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I haven't worried about it. People ask me, "What do you want to be remembered for?" I think if you just remembered, whether you're an S.O.B or whether you're a good guy or whatever, if people remember you, you know you've made a mark on somebody or something through life.

Also:
• Parks' mantra was simple: Be the fastest and the best
• Johnson wasn't that interested in being a driver
• Childress reflects on career that started behind wheel
• Heartbreak, triumph vivid for HOF nominee Moore
• Glen Wood looks back on legendary career