Richard Petty

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- How great is the interest in Richard Petty's last race before retirement and the six-driver chase for the NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship?Extraordinary.According to spokesman Richard Sowers of Atlanta Motor Speedway, where the season finale Hooters 500 is scheduled Sunday, approximately 800 journalists have requested credentials for the event. This doesn't include the 100-or-so person crew of ESPN, which will televise the historic 500.In addition to the U.S. press, print media from Canada, France, Japan, Latvia and even Ghana have indicated plans to file stories.

Michael Waltrip will make a historic run in this year's Daytona 500. He will make his 75th start on the fabled superspeedway — the most of any driver — on Feb. 26. He will drive the No. 40 Aaron's Dream Machine Toyota for Aaron Racing. "When I was a kid thinking about Daytona, I never dreamed I would start more NASCAR races there than anyone," Waltrip, 48, said. "That's amazing. " Hopefully, Waltrip will bring plenty of 5-Hour Energy — one of his sponsors — down to Daytona.

When Adam Petty's race car slammed into a concrete wall at 150 mph last May, his body was tightly secured by a safety harness and seat belt. What instantly doomed the 19-year-old grandson of legendary driver Richard Petty was that his head was inadequately restrained. As the car came to its stop, laws of physics kept Adam's head hurtling in the direction of impact - to the right and slightly forward. The only tethers holding his head to his body were his neck muscles and spinal column.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - It seems only appropriate that this Daytona 500 falls on Valentine's Day. This is, after all, the day when NASCAR hopes its fans will fall back in love with its sport. It is a day NASCAR hopes to write a steamy love letter at 190 mph, vowing to its long, lost fans that it has changed for the better; that the passion and romance is back; that the sport never again will stray and be unfaithful to those who love it most. Roses are red, Violets are blue, Bump-drafting is legal, Bigger restrictor plates, too. Sunday's Great American Race is NASCAR's Great American Opportunity to rekindle a dying love affair.

LEVEL CROSS, N.C. --There they are. Behind glass. Under lock and key. Preserved for posterity. Two gen-yoo-ine pieces of American sports memorabilia:Richard Petty's socks!And not just any pair of Richard Petty's socks. These are the white, flame-retardant socks Mr. Petty wore when he posted the most recent victory of his long and distinguished career as a stock-car driver.Some of the other souvenirs from his victory at the 1984 Firecracker 400 at Daytona are also behind glass at the Richard Petty Museum -- his uniform, the trophy, the empty bottle of champagne from which he sipped in Victory Lane.

I was zoning out at the red light, looking at the Hooters billboard. Hooters, man, how could a restaurant name itself that? I heard something disturbing in the low-cloud quiet of the afternoon. Revving. Real loud. Purposeful. I turned to my left. White Mustang, spoiler, guy in a feed hat. Revving loud. "Let's go." He's not daring me, is he? That competitive thing in me was starting to flow. How fast could this rented Sebring convertible with the automatic transmission go, anyway? Rrrroarrr, came the reiterated dare.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Oh, the strain of it. The media crush. The sponsor demands. The autograph seekers. The turmoil. The tension.It has been enough to make Daytona 500 pole-sitters shudder. Enough to send them scurrying out of sight or hurtling toward nervous breakdown. Enough to make them short of time and short of temper.Kyle Petty, the pole-sitter for today's Daytona 500, was lounging among leather cushions in his team transporter's sitting room, his face hidden behind the lifestyle section of a local newspaper.

Richard Petty retired last weekend. His name doesn't usually show up on editorial pages, but social historians who want to understand this age need to take careful note of his career and his fans. He's a stock car driver.Except for major league baseball and horse racing, no professional sport in America draws the crowds that auto racing does. And no baseball players and very few jockeys have had a career as long as Richard Petty's. His last race Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, at age 55, came 35 years after his first.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Yesterday's Daytona 500 had all the makings of a poignant new chapter in Petty family lore.Seven-time winner Richard Petty was making his debut as a car owner.Son Kyle, who never has won the race, was starting a powerful Pontiac from the pole.And Lee Petty, who won the first Daytona 500 in 1959, had made the trip from Level Cross, N.C., to watch it unfold.By the time it ended, Richard saw driver Rick Wilson slam his red and blue No. 44 Pontiac into the wall.And the easygoing Kyle was in a red-faced rage, shaking his finger in Bobby Hillin's face for a crash that put him out of the race.

After 12 years, Kyle Petty thinks he has finally positioned himself to have a season like Richard Petty used to have."With this team, I expect to win races and position myself to win a championship," said Kyle, son of the seven-time Winston Cup champion. "We're capable of doing that and doing that consistently."Kyle Petty won the first time he ever raced at Daytona International Speedway. It was a mixed blessing, as he drove his first car to an ARCA victory in one of the Daytona 500 preliminary races in 1979.

Auto racing Kahne ends 37-race drought, earns rare victory for Petty Kasey Kahne gave struggling Richard Petty Motorsports a much-needed boost Sunday, holding off Tony Stewart in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., to end a 37-race winless streak and earn his first road-course victory. Kahne was met in Victory Lane by Richard Petty, who made his first trip as a car owner in more than a decade. A Petty-owned car had not won a race since John Andretti's victory at Martinsville in April 1999.

It's certainly tempting to take a swipe at auto racing legend Richard Petty for his latest rant about the supposed inability of women to compete behind the wheel, but I'll just let Danica Patrick do the talking today in Indianapolis. Petty was just saying what pretty much all the old-school NASCAR types probably think whenever they see a woman in a firesuit (right after they think "Ooh, nice firesuit," of course): "Auto racing has always been a man's game, little lady, so why don't you just go down to the picnic area and whip me up some cornbread?"

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Robbie Loomis, the new executive vice president at Petty Enterprises, sat in a director's chair outside the No. 43 transporter this week and said he is actually the team's CEO. "That's chief encouragement officer," Loomis said, only half joking. "This team has worked hard. Its members are committed and they have the heart. What they needed was the confidence." For some organizations it looks so easy, this sport of high speed stock car racing. The crew does its job, the driver gets in the car on Sunday, and as expected often arrives in victory lane.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Say the name Charger, and NBC commentator and retired NASCAR champion Benny Parsons, who never even drove one, wraps his hands over his ample belly and sighs with contentment. "Thirty years ago, that car won me the Daytona 500," said Parsons, who won the 1975 race in a Chevrolet. "Richard Petty's Dodge Charger was unbelievably fast that day, but he had a crack in his radiator and had to keep stopping for water. "With 12 laps to go, he came out of the pits and picked me up and carried me to the front.

The 2004 NASCAR season got in gear this month with the running of the Daytona 500, so it's a perfect time to take a closer look at NASCAR video gaming. NASCAR titles have been in short supply, but not because they're unpopular. For a few years there was a glut of NASCAR games on the market - everybody and his brother wanted you to know the pleasures of driving modified stock Fords and Chevrolets in circles. These days, fewer titles are released, because the NASCAR games from Electronic Arts and Infogrames have blown away the rest of the field.

Kyle Petty hasn't won a race since 1995, and after two races this season, he is 21st in the Winston Cup points standings. But that doesn't mean he's not popular. And it doesn't mean people aren't rooting for him. For those who might not be Petty fans and have doubts about just how popular the son of seven-time champion Richard Petty is, consider this: Rides with all 43 Winston Cup drivers around the track before today's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 in Las Vegas were put out to bid in a charity auction that raised $110,000 Thursday for children's charities.

HAMPTON, Ga. -- The Hooters 500 had not yet reached the halfway point yesterday, when Richard Petty found himself sitting on a workbench in the garage surrounded by microphones, mini-cams and notebooks.He had had big plans for this day, his last as a Winston Cup stock car driver. It was the last race in a glorious 35-year career, and Richard Petty had hoped for one last, memorable run."I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory," he said to the media horde surrounding him. "Well, I went out in a blaze, but I forgot the glory part."

RANDLEMAN, N.C. -- As the long white bus with the words "Richard Petty for Secretary of State" in blue script on its sides rolls to a halt, there is no one to be seen in Bunn, N.C. But when Richard Petty emerges onto the street, this town of 364 residents suddenly is alive.Folks emerge from every doorway. Cars and trucks pull to the curb. People rush toward the candidate, a slim man dressed in jeans, sport jacket, black felt cowboy hat and dark sunglasses. After signing napkins, wallets and shirts, he inches farther down the street, leaving Rhonda Cox enthralled.

Behind his dark sunglasses, Richard Petty reviewed a thousand memories. He'd grown up in stock car racing. He went to the races with his father, Lee, a three-time Winston Cup champion, and he knew where the wives and children were supposed to be. And after he got married, he continued the family tradition during his racing career. "We'd drive into the racetrack and leave the wives and kids in the infield with the drunks and go on to the race cars," Petty said. It went on like that for decades.

From the moment Kyle Petty stepped into a race car at Daytona International Speedway in 1979, almost everyone wanted him to succeed. The public did because he was the son of seven-time champion Richard Petty. The media did because he was a joy to interview, just as his dad was and is. And over the years, wanting Kyle Petty to do well hasn't changed - though the reasons may have. Now, almost everyone wants him to win not only because he is Richard's son, but also because it might brighten the day of a man who lost his own son, Adam, to a racing accident.