RACING’S ROYAL FAMILY – PART 2
Richard and Maurice Petty were young men
in their early 20s when Speedweeks 1961 ended. But now they were faced with
running a race team. Wrote Richard, "Here’s another place where I was
‘given’ something. I did take over Petty Enterprises…..But what did I have? I
had two racecars that were totally destroyed, a Daddy in the hospital in
traction, no sponsor, no money at all from the Daytona race – and that was one
we always counted on," and also no crew. The two brothers now traded jobs –
Maurice became chief engine builder and Richard took over the chassis. They also
went to King’s Business College in Greensboro to learn more about running the
business. It was here that Richard took a penmanship course that resulted in the
Spencerian-script handwriting that has been immortalized in Richard’s autograph.
With Dale Inman as crew chief, the Petty
boys ran the full 1961 schedule – 42 races. And unlike almost all the other
drivers, the Pettys built their cars, built a new shop, dug holes to install
underground gas tanks, and handled finances. "Some (of the other drivers)
were 100% drivers, some were 50%. All were zero-percent car builders. I was 100%
everything," Richard wrote.
Lee managed to return home around June of
’61 and helped his sons as best he could. And 1961 turned out reasonably well –
Richard finished eighth in points and had two wins.
The Pettys were handicapped because the
Plymouths they ran had less power than other cars, plus Chrysler was not
spending much money on the sport. Chevrolet and Pontiac ate up the racetracks
1961 and ’62, but in 1962 two things happened to Petty Enterprises – they hired
Jim Paschal to drive their second car, and Chrysler began to spend some more
money. As a result, the team and Richard’s results improved dramatically – Petty
won nine times and finished second in Grand National points to Little Joe
Weatherly. And that year, Richard was voted Most Popular Driver, an award he
took to heart. "I had always tried to treat everyone right and not let
success go to my head."
For 1963 GM abruptly quit and Ford jumped
in all guns blazing. Richard finished second in points to Joe Weatherly again –
it was amazing that Weatherly won, given that he drove for nine different teams
that year to run all the races – and won thirteen races. Jim Paschal added
several more wins that year, and Petty Enterprises was profiting even more,
profits that were promptly reinvested into the team. They also tire-tested
extensively.
1964 proved to be Richard’s breakthrough
year. Tired of getting smoked off superspeedways for years, Chrysler reached
into their files and brought back a 1951 engine with hemispherical combustion
chambers. The hemi had proven impractical as a street engine, but with
tremendous power it was natural for racing. After the tragic Riverside 500 in
January – Joe Weatherly died after slamming a boilerplate wall – Daytona came,
and Chrysler products suddenly stormed to the front. In the Daytona 500, Richard
Petty let loose, lapping the entire field, leading 184 laps, and taking his
first superspeedway win. "Ford had started an advertising program that was
built around its successful racing program," Richard wrote. "It was
called, ‘Total Performance.’ Right after the race, Dick Williford, Plymouth’s PR
man, passed out buttons that read, ‘Total What?’ I still have one of them."
But he didn’t scratch again until April,
and during this time the Fords, less powerful than the hemi-engined Mopars, benefited
from the excess power of the Chryslers on short tracks and won eleven of the
next fifteen races. Part of the reason for the Fords’ superiority was that they
were much lighter than the Chryslers. "The Fords should be at least 400
pounds heavier……but they are a couple hundred pounds lighter," Petty
said after a crash-torn Atlanta 500 in which Paul Goldsmith blew out the right
front tire, socked the guardrail, and slid on his roof through Three and Four.
"Some of us think they’ve lightened up their cars to a dangerous point from
a safety standpoint."
It proved tragically prescient at the
World 600. Ned Jarrett was tagged by Junior Johnson and both spinning Fords
swept up Fireball Roberts. Roberts flipped backwards into the abutment of an
infield wall and the car exploded. "My God, Ned, help me, I’m on
fire!" Roberts said as Jarrett pulled him out.
Petty was ahead of the crash. "I saw
Johnson and Jarrett spinning and then I saw a third car get airborne and catch
on fire. The next time I came around, I recognized Fireball’s car……The next
time around, I couldn’t look."
Richard went on, and teammate Jim Paschal
won the World 600 with Petty second. As the season went on, Petty dueled for
wins and the season title with the 1961 champ Ned Jarrett and a fast-rising peer
of Richard’s named David Pearson, driving Cotton Owens’ Dodge.
Roberts’ Holman-Moody Ford was impounded
to the garage area, but Lee Petty managed to clip off a piece of its sheetmetal
and have it analyzed. "The quarterpaneling and fenders on the Fords are
like tissue paper," Richard Petty said.
Roberts fought for his life in the
hospital, and it appeared he would recover, but an operation in late June set
off blood poisoning, and Roberts died before qualifying for the Firecracker 400
at his home track.
On the same day as Roberts’ crash, Eddie
Sachs and Davey MacDonald were killed in a horrendous inferno at the
Indianapolis 500. Later that year Jimmy Pardue died when his car plowed through
the Charlotte guardrail during a tire test.
Despite such tragedies, the racing went
on, and 1964 proved one of the most competitive seasons the sport had seen.
Petty won the Grand National title and nine races; he also won Most Popular
Driver while Maurice was named Mechanic of the Year. Ned Jarrett won fifteen
races and finished second in points, while David Pearson had eight wins and
third in points.
And stock car racing was starting to grab
some serious attention. "All of a sudden," Petty wrote, "you read
about Grand National and its superstars in everything from Grit to Sports
Illustrated."
But for the Pettys, it seemed to end when
NASCAR announced that exotic engines like the hemi were banned for the 1965
season. Chrysler thus withdrew from the Grand National series, and asked Richard
to go drag racing. Petty built a Plymouth Barracuda, numbered it 43 jr. –
Outlawed, and promptly won at Atlanta. That a roundy-round champion was now
winning in straight-line competition got serious attention – NHRA track
attendance exploded from an average of 2,500 to over 10,000. But the fun ended
at Dallas, Georgia at the end of February when Petty’s Barracuda shot off the
track, hit a dirt bank, vaulted a fence, and landed in a spectator area. In
shock, Petty said, "Don’t worry about me. Take care of the people I
hit." Several spectators were hurt – one, Emory Allen, critically – and an
eight year old boy, Wayne Dye, was killed.
"I’ve never had anything in my life
get to me like that," Petty wrote. Though he won another drag race – at
Bristol in June – his heart was no longer in it.
NASCAR, meanwhile, was suffering at the
gate because of the hemi ban. The ban was lifted in July, and Petty managed to
get in 14 races, winning four.
1966 was only slightly different. Petty
overpowered the Daytona 500 field from his only pole at the track, and then Ford
announced its own boycott over NASCAR handicapping of its overhead cam engine.
That, though, had fizzled out by October, and as Greg Fielden put it,
"Things were, more or less, back to normal." David Pearson won fifteen
races and the title in Cotton Owens’ Dodge, Petty skipped several races due to
hand surgery but won eight races and finished third in points, and Rookie of the
Year James Hylton didn’t win but parlayed 20 top fives into second in points.
And then came 1967.
Ford came out strong with new intake and
cylinder head pieces, and promptly won at Riverside and the Daytona 500. Ford
next won at the Atlanta 500 as Cale Yarborough, now driving the Wood Brothers’
Ford, overwhelmed the field. Because they were struggling on the superspeedways,
Chrysler tried to launch another boycott, but this time its teams balked.
Petty Enterprises started with a 1967
Plymouth Belvedere, but had struggled with it, so they took their 1966 car and
reskinned it. Then the wins began. Lee Petty had held the record for most career
wins at 54, but Richard broke it by overpowering the Rebel 400 at Darlington –
"As far as I’m concerned, the Petty family has 109 wins," Petty said.
By the time of the June Carolina 500 at
Rockingham, Petty took the point lead from James Hylton and had won 11 times.
And after the Firecracker at Daytona, Petty really got going. He won five of the
next seven races, dominated Atlanta only to break, and then put the hammer down
for good. At Bowman-Gray Stadium, Petty tied Tim Flock’s 1955 record of seasonal
wins at eighteen, and didn’t look back.
He set a record generally conceded as
unbreakable – ten wins in a row. At North Wilkesboro Petty cleaned house before
a phalanx of Ford racing officials, and by the time the season was over, he’d
long since clinched the title and set a record for seasonal earnings at
$130,000. He was voted Driver of the Year, won the Martini & Rossi American
Driver of the Year award in all of racing, and attention paid to NASCAR racing
escalated.
But Petty’s success wound up exacting a
price for Chrysler’s NASCAR program in 1968. Lost amid Petty’s success was the
fact that Chrysler had cut its race team backing in half entering 1967;
Pentastar teams were still using 1964-vintage engine pieces where Ford had
updated heavily. And being humiliated by Petty sent Ford to work with a
vengeance. It increased its NASCAR budget and rolled out sleek new racecars –
the Ford Torino and Mercury Montego, which were based on Dodge’s fastback
Charger 500 first run in 1966. "They threw a lot of Fords in there, a lot
of drivers, and we kept beating them, but eventually numbers prevail,"
Maurice Petty said.
David Pearson, now with Holman-Moody, was
sent out to run for the title, and it was here that the Pearson-Petty rivalry
really took off. "David would run off three or four (wins), and we’d win a
couple. Pearson would come right back with a win or two, and we’d win a couple
more. It went on like that all year long……"
And a new force was also contending for
the title – Bobby Isaac, winless since a 1964 qualifier at Daytona. Hooked up
with Harry Hyde and Nord Krauskopf’s K&K Insurance Dodge, Isaac won three
times in 1968 and battled for the title all season.
Ford’s success caused Chrysler teams to
demand better help from the factory. "Chrysler had better stop singing
songs and come up with some good parts," one driver muttered. Lee Petty
noted that Ford was outspending Chrysler enormously. And Richard was demanding
that he be able to switch to Dodge, which was where the aerodynamic effort was
going. Chrysler said no, he was to stay with Plymouths, and the overall Chrysler
effort continued pretty much on the cheap. The season ended with David Pearson
as the Grand National champ, Bobby Isaac second, and Petty third. Pearson and
Petty had won 16 races apiece, and Petty was voted Most Popular Driver again.
But his relationship with Chrysler had
deteriorated badly, and he felt he could not get what was necessary to stay
competitive. So in late 1968, Petty shocked racing by annoucing he would run
Fords for 1969. "When we left Chrysler," Petty wrote, "there were
a lot of hurt feelings among the manufacturer, its personnel, and our fans. But
we were trying to do the right thing for Petty Enterprises, and that was pretty
important, too."
In his first outing in a Ford, Petty won
at Riverside. "Then we headed to Daytona and had all kinds of problems
trying to sort out the handling of the Torino." Petty drop-kicked Bobby
Isaac and wound up eighth. He later blew a tire and punched the wall at
Asheville-Weaverville Speedway, a hit so hard the right front wheel entered the
driver’s compartment and injured Petty’s ribs. He sat out two races.
When he came back, the press was counting
down a new angle on Petty’s career – he was closing in on 100 Grand National
victories. It was at Bowman-Gray Stadium that he reached 100. As when he broke
Lee’s victory record, Richard felt no special excitement about winning 100.
The primary reason Petty had switched to
Ford was because he felt he would be more competitive on superspeedways. He did
manage a win at the inaugural Mason-Dixon 300 at Dover, Delaware, and he also
finished well in the inaugural Motor State 500 at Michigan. But as he later
wrote, he found that the Ford engine and overall program were not the
improvement he had expected.
Amid all this, Petty was involved in a new
angle within the sport. During the Yankee 600 weekend at Michigan, Petty and
several other drivers got together and formed the Professional Drivers
Association, a group – "people took it to be a union, (but) it wasn’t. I’m
the last person to be a union man," Petty wrote – that soon encompassed the
majority of teams in Grand National. The PDA had prepared a laundry list of
items they wanted changed – pension, insurance, and retirement plans for
drivers, improvements in facilities, greater say in decision-making, and so
forth. When the group’s formation was announced at Darlington, "it got
taken the wrong way by NASCAR," and Big Bill France looked down on the idea
of a drivers’ union; he noted that LeeRoy Yarbrough, a member, had already won
over $100,000 that season.
As the season wound on, rumors that the
drivers would stage some kind of boycott of a race swirled through the sport. No
boycott ensued, as the PDA insisted it wanted to work with NASCAR and make the
sport better in both the short and long terms. An uneasy peace thus existed
between the two bodies.
All that, though, caught fire amid the
most anticipated event of the year – the inaugural Talladega 500. The new
Alabama International Motor Speedway had been completed in mid-summer as the
crowning achievement of Big Bill France’s racetrack company International
Speedway Corporation, and teams had begun testing there almost immediately. And
almost immediately the speeds – almost at 200 MPH – began playing havoc with
tires. Charlie Glotzbach tested and broke two brand new A-arms, and when
Firestone announced it would not field tires for the Talladega 500, that settled
the issue for the PDA.
Bill France, however, wanted his new race
to proceed without delay, even after an angry confrontation with the drivers
entering the third weekend of September, the scheduled weekend of the 500.
"I polled all the PDA members," Petty wrote, "and they said they
were in favor of not racing until new tires could be tested." A total of 32
drivers withdrew from the Talladega 500, and the field was filled with Grand
American cars that had raced the previous day and a few Grand National cars.
Only Bobby Isaac among big name drivers raced, and dark horse Richard Brickhouse,
who’d spent a lot of the season testing for Firestone, drove a Ray Nichels Dodge
to the win.
The winning car was a brand new 1969 Dodge
Daytona, a shark-nosed high winged monster. Seeing that the Ford program did not
give the team the edge needed, Petty began negotiations with Chrysler. He wanted
to run Dodges to have the Daytona; Chrysler, though, still wanted him to run
Plymouths, and they had a Plymouth wingcar prepared for Petty – the 1970
Superbird. In addition, Chrysler provided enough backing for Petty Enterprises
to field two cars.
First, though, came wrapping up the 1969
season. Petty and other drivers who participated in the Talladega boycott were
booed by fans at subsequent races while Bobby Isaac, who’d finished fourth at
Talladega, got resounding applause. Maurice Petty also notes that NASCAR became
more nitpicky in inspections after the Talladega boycott. When it was over
Pearson had the title and Petty was second, with Isaac a surprisingly distant
sixth in points despite 17 wins.
For the 1970 season Pete Hamilton, the
1968 Grand National Rookie of the Year, was hired for the second Petty
Enterpises Superbird. In his first start that year, a late yellow enabled him to
whip David Pearson at the finish of the Daytona 500.
Petty’s first win of the year came after
he had a nightmare of being in a plane crash with his family – "I woke up
in a cold sweat," he wrote in 1977. In the ensuing Carolina 500 at
Rockingham Petty dominated, then clipped Cale Yarborough coming to the pits and
spun, yet still won handily.
Pete Hamilton overhauled Buddy Baker at
the Alabama 500 at Talladega in April. After winning at Savannah, GA, North
Wilkesboro, and Columbia, SC, Petty crashed his Superbird during practice at
Darlington, then bludgeoned the inside wall in his short track Roadrunner during
the Rebel 400. Petty had to sit out five races, and all hope for the title
disappeared. Jim Paschal drove the #43 Superbird at Charlotte and led until
overheating.
Petty came back at Michigan and led 90
laps before falling out. A scoring breakdown put Cale Yarborough on the lead lap
even though he in fact was a lap down, and it helped cost Pete Hamilton the win.
Petty responded by leading almost wire to wire at Riverside, and ultimately won
18 races. But he could not catch Bobby Isaac, who won eleven races and the Grand
National title.
But at the end of the year, Ford announced
it was withdrawing from racing. After that, Chrysler announced it would cut back
to just the Petty team and then quit after 1971. But this bad news was countered
by good news – R.J. Reynolds announced it would sponsor the Grand National
Series through its Winston brand of cigarettes. The point fund, paid in three
legs, totaled $100,000.
"Reynolds fulfilled every
promise," Petty noted. "Not only did they know what they were doing,
helping promote the races and increase the crowds, but they also did it with one
of the most personable groups of people racing had ever seen. It was a total
attitude of cooperation, and the racers responded."