RACING’S ROYAL FAMILY – PART 6
If the 1988 season had been a disaster,
1989 offered hope of redemption for both Richard and Kyle. For Kyle, the
mid-summer 1988 meeting had led to employment by a new team owner in Winston Cup
– Felix Sabates. A refugee from Castro’s Cuba, Sabates was a self-made
billionaire who’d first dabbled in racing in the Busch Series as a sponsor. Now,
partnered with Ted Conder he’d purchased Rick Hendrick’s R&D team and crew
chief Gary Nelson, acquired PEAK Antifreeze as sponsor, and wanted to go racing.
They wanted to run Chevrolets but Chevy said no and then Pontiac said yes. The
first year was to be a limited shake-down schedule.
Both Richard and Kyle entered Daytona
1989, and right away both saw that they were in for a rough time. A NASCAR
change to bodies two weeks before Speedweeks caught the Pettys off guard.
Richard timed abysmally and there was a strong chance that he’d fail to qualify
for the 500. Kyle timed better but had no owner’s points to fall back on if he
needed a provisional. Worst came to worst in the 125s – Lake Speed chopped off
Rick Wilson in the tri-oval, both spun into traffic, and fifteen cars were
destroyed, including Kyle. "Everyone has worked so hard, and now we’re not
going to be here Sunday," a tearful Pattie said to Mike Joy of CBS TV.
Richard didn’t crash but he cut a tire,
the stop surprisingly fell out of sequence, and he finished poorly; nonetheless
he managed to get in on a provisional, and with eight teams having to go to
backup cars that meant he’d start 34th.
Kyle was not in the 500, but Sabates and
Conder negotiated with Eddie Bierschwale’s unsponsored #23 team and agreed that
Kyle would jump into the car at the first pit stop.
Both Pettys showed grit in the 500. Kyle
took over the #23 at the first yellow and actually led several laps. Richard
clawed his way into the top ten and was running 12th when he banged wheels with
Michael Waltrip and lost a lap getting new tires. He finished 17th as Kyle
brought the Bierschwale Oldsmobile home in the top ten.
With Richmond snowed out, Rockingham was
next. Richard finished 16th as Rusty Wallace made up a lap en route to the win.
Atlanta was the next stop. Richard and Kyle were both in the race, and Kyle led
several laps and ultimately finished fourth. Richard started 24th and clawed his
way into the lead. He was running fourth when the engine started surging; when
he pitted for tires, gas spilled from the fuel inlet valve and a spark from the
exhaust lit it on fire. Gasman Robert Callicutt caught fire and suffered second
degree burns over half his body. Petty’s engine soon after shut off.
For Kyle, fourth was the high point of his
limited year, while top tens followed at Michigan, Talladega, Rockingham, and
the November 500 at Atlanta. The SABCO team played it conservatively, though,
and got into wrecks in the back and also barely finished races with weak parts.
For Richard, then came Richmond. Timing
out of the field on pole day, Petty practiced well for second round qualifying,
but crashed before the qualifying session began. Thus unable to post a
qualifying lap, Petty could not use a provisional, and was thus unable to start.
Rodney Combs and Jim Sauter offered their cars to Richard, but he refused and
returned to Randleman. Lynda Petty said later that she cried for the entirety of
the return trip, while Lisa said that she and her sisters did all they could to
cheer their father up on race day.
"Two races later at Bristol,"
Richard wrote, "we didn’t make the field, and we missed making two more
races before the end of the year. When we did make the field, we ran like junk.
We were totally out to lunch and nothing we did made a difference." Only at
Michigan in June, when Richard rocketed to fifth only to blow his engine in a
ball of flame, did the STP Pontiac show what it could do. "We began
experimenting more, which had always been the key to our success in the past. We
listened to anyone who had an idea. It was a mess."
So much so that by June of 1989 Richard
had hired Larry Rathjeb, a former Chrysler engineer who’d worked with Petty when
he ran Mopars, to analyze the team and its approach to preparing for races.
Rathjeb studied the team top to bottom, and massive changes came about; among
the biggest changes was a clearer separation of duties by crewmen, who’d often
done several jobs. The shop’s engine room was closed for reorganization, and
Petty Enterprises contracted with ProMotor Engineering for their 1990 engines;
Pontiac chipped in by contracting engine builder Mike Kennedy to build Petty’s
restrictor plate motors. Richard himself changed his diet and began paying more
attention to his health, while Dale Inman became the team’s spotter, and
second-year crewman Robbie Loomis became pit chief.
As for Kyle, there were changes as well.
1990 would see SABCO Racing run the full schedule, and the team managed to
acquire its own dynamometer for engine builder John Wilson. The team also
changed its close-to-the-vest approach of 1989 and decided to go all out for
wins and laps lead.
For Speedweeks 1990 it appeared Petty
Enterprises’ changes would bear lush immediate fruit. Richard qualified well for
the 500, then in his 125 stormed into the lead and led 15 laps. He needed a
splash of fuel with ten to go and wound up fifth; he escaped Ken Schrader’s
last-lap crash off Four.
While Kyle’s Speedweeks didn’t go terribly
well, Richard was pumped. He fell back in the early laps of the Daytona 500 but
fought his way to 11th when the right rear tire went down in Turn One after some
20 laps. He lost a lap in getting back to the pits and so ended the flicker.
Given how deep Petty Enterprises had sunk
1988-9, clawing back up clearly was going to take a lot of time. The next dozen
races were more struggle – particularly the Winston 500, where Petty was
expected to be competitive but surprisingly was victimized by engine problems
throughout the weekend – but now the team was qualifying for races and making
laps. They also began to finish well again – 11th at Michigan, and ninth at the
Summer 500 at Pocono.
At the Firecracker 400 Richard timed
seventh as Greg Sacks won the pole. But before the race NASCAR confiscated the
manifolds of several teams – they were loose-insert manifolds first created by
Jack Roush the year before – and had them banned. On the start Sacks faltered
and he, Petty, and Derrike Cope were three-wide for sixth for the entirety of
the opening lap. Cope sideswiped Sacks in the tri-oval, Sacks hooked into Petty,
and all three shot into the tri-oval wall. When it was all over 22 cars plowed
into the melee and the race was red-flagged for 36 minutes. "You can’t win
a race on the first lap," Richard growled, "and there are a bunch of
us in the garage area to prove that….I got hit in the right rear and it spun
me the wrong way. That looks like yellow paint, don’t it?" Sacks, sponsored
by Ultra SlimFast health drink mix, drove a yellow car.
The Petty now making waves was Kyle, tenth
in that Firecracker 400. At Rockingham he won the pole for the very first time
in his career. From there he led all but a handful of laps, put the entire field
a lap down – he let Geoff Bodine back on the lead lap late: "I thought it
would be pretty foolish to wreck racing a couple of lapped cars" – and
handily won nearly $300,000. "We dominated. It was totally cosmic the way
we ran today," Kyle said.
Kyle didn’t quite approach that kind of
power again until the second Rockingham race, where he dominated but lost power
and wound up finishing 20th. "Whoever won this race" (it was Alan
Kulwicki) "had a second-place car. We had them covered today," Kyle
said.
When the 1990 season ended he notched
fourteen top tens, finished fourth at Charlotte in October, and established
himself and SABCO as a contender despite a deceivingly poor 11th in points.
But along the way, a rift was created with
crew chief Gary Nelson. When a Sportsman driver was killed at Charlotte, Nelson
criticized Kyle as being excessively caught up in what had happened. None of
that seemed to affect the SABCO team entering 1991. The #42 Pontiac now had a
new sponsor, Mello Yello citrus soda, which exploited Kyle’s rebellious nature
quite well, due in part to its role as "sponsor" of Tom Cruise’s car
in the Hollywood racing film "Days of Thunder".
For Richard, 1991 was Year Two of the
rebuilding effort of Petty Enterprises. The in-house engine shop was being
reopened on a limited basis, readying for full duty in 1992. Richard timed
strong on Daytona pole day, and rocketed to finish second in his 125. Kyle
finished third in the other 125 and said afterward, "He (Richard) beat me. Every time
I run good here, he beats me."
Dale Earnhardt was the overwhelming
favorite for the 500, but it was Kyle who led the most laps. Richard ran well
but in a very long green flag period got lapped and then got hit by Robby
Gordon. This set up a late sprint that saw Ernie Irvan storm past Earnhardt and
then Earnhardt spin and collect Davey Allison and Kyle.
Despite his Daytona crash, Kyle was on his
way. He dominated Rockingham again – despite a no-tires-under-yellow pit rule
that cost him a lap – and led more laps than anyone else entering the Winston
500. Richard, meanwhile, exploded at North Wilkesboro; he started last and
rocketed into the top six but was then tagged into the wall by rookie Bobby
Hamilton – he told Hamilton afterward, "Don’t jack with me, boy, I’ll do it
four times worse to you."
At Talladega Kyle timed third and stormed
into the lead early on. But this was a race where the entire field was fighting
it out two abreast for the win. Entering the backstretch at lap 70 Ernie Irvan
tried to bulldoze up the middle, snagged Kyle and Mark Martin, and suddenly all
three spun into traffic. Twenty-three cars were wiped out and Kyle was T-boned
through the door by Chad Little. Kyle’s leg was shattered, and in fact almost
severed, and so ended his season. He did come back at Darlington and ran the
rest of the season, but it would be 1992 before he could get his rhythm back.
As for Richard, 1991 showed some of the
fire of the glory years. At the World 600 he lost a lap after two air guns broke
on a stop and the yellow flew, but he roared onward and clawed into seventh. But
with 16 to go he passed Darrell Waltrip and then a tire went down. Richard
socked the wall in Four and was briefly hospitalized. "I hurt worse down
here than I did when I crashed at Daytona."
At Sears Point Richard shot into a tire
wall and injured his leg again. Though there was talk of using a relief driver
at Pocono, he ran the full race. He got drilled by Lake Speed after 146 laps,
and from 22nd Richard got mad, and he passed a dozen cars over the final 54
laps. He lost tenth in the final laps but his 11th was still impressive.
The return trip to Pocono looked to be
even better, as he clawed his way into the top ten. After a crowded restart at
Lap 69 Richard passed Dale Earnhardt for sixth, but Hut Stricklin and Ernie
Irvan were battling for the lead; in the Tunnel Turn Stricklin shoved Irvan to
the wall, and in Three Irvan hit back, spun Stricklin, and the track was
momentarily blocked. Cars spun and Richard flew over Ricky Rudd’s hood; eleven
cars were wiped out. "I don’t know what’s going on," Darrell Waltrip,
one of the victims, growled, "but there are some guys out there who just
aren’t using any judgment."
That took much of the fire out of the #43
for the rest of the year, but Richard did manage a ninth at Watkins Glen and a
12th at Charlotte.
The big story, however, came before the
Charlotte race. In the latter stages of 1990 Richard had arrived at the decision
on his driving, and in fact at Daytona the ensuing February the rumor floated
that he had informed STP of his decision. On October 1st, 1991, Richard made the
announcement – 1992 would be his final season as a driver. The decision had come
due to numerous factors, including a realization that he was not attacking the
tracks like he needed to. "(1991) was another unpleasant year for us at
Petty Enterprises….as the year wore on my crew and I realized more and more
that it wasn’t fun anymore…..I enjoyed the driving, but our whole program
wasn’t working. I had always said that when it stopped being fun, I would stop
driving the car, and I had always told the media….I would call them all
together in one place and tell them all at once."
1992 was not a farewell tour,
"because I ain’t goin’ nowhere." It was the Fan Appreciation Tour, and
it brought something that NASCAR had generally lacked – massive marketing. Among
the items marketed were die-cast cars for each track. A mini-scandal erupted
over charges of price-gouging; Richard took immediate action and had the model
cars sold by a different body.
The 1992 season was bound to be emotional.
Richard timed tenth in Daytona qualifying but he and Kyle crashed in their 125.
Richard started 34th and gave a unique command to start engines: "Okay you
guys, let’s go, crank ’em up!"
Richard’s 500 ended when he was caught in
a 14-car melee on the backstretch. He managed a 16th, while Kyle posted his
first top ten ever in the 500, sixth.
The 500 was the first under a new Winston
Cup director. The 1991 season had seen massive modifications by teams of their
cylinder heads, and inspections were getting more difficult. NASCAR wanted a
crew chief who understood modern racing technology as Winston Cup director with
longtime director Dick Beaty retiring. So NASCAR contacted Gary Nelson, known
throughout the garage as the sport’s most ingenious cheater, and he took the job
with an unnerving relish. "Cheating" was exposed on a greater scale in
Nelson’s very first inspection of racecars, and anti-Nelson graffiti became
common in the garage area at Daytona.
As Nelson’s replacement at SABCO Kyle
recommended Robin Pemberton, whom Kyle had known since the native New Yorker
moved to North Carolina in 1979 and got a job at Petty Enterprises. Kyle and
Robin were known as "The Lollipop Kids" because they were "young
and brash and laughed too much" but the reunion at SABCO would be more than
that.
Richard ran respectably at Rockingham
while Kyle appeared ready to dominate as he had the previous two spring races.
But he surprisingly faltered and finally fell out with engine failure.
Richard ran quite well at Atlanta, clawing
his way to eleventh at one point. But everything was turned upside down at Lap
285 when Mike Wallace crashed, just as everyone except Bill Elliott had pitted
under green. "That damn Georgia boy has got the whole field a lap
down," Pemberton muttered. The win was Elliott’s third in a row in his
debut season with Junior Johnson. Kyle finished 8th and Richard 16th.
The short track swing wasn’t too kind. At
Bristol – Kyle’s opinion of the ultra-high-banked bowl: "They ought to blow
it up" – Elliott’s Junior Johnson teammate Sterling Marlin slammed the wall
off Two at Lap 16 and slid into Richard’s path. Kyle got payback by tagging Bill
Elliott 15 laps later. Kyle himself socked the wall and finished 19th; Richard
27th.
North Wilkesboro wasn’t better. Richard
rammed several cars as they slowed for a spin in Four. Kyle tagged Ernie Irvan
after Irvan broke loose on a patch of loose asphalt, and at Lap 311 he was
nailed by Bobby Hillin Jr., who’d subbed for Kyle the year before. "I’m
gonna be cool, and I’m gonna take care of Hillin," Kyle said after he got
back out. Hillin was held by NASCAR for five laps, and during that time Felix
Sabates stuck his face into the cockpit and chewed out Hillin. Following the
race Kyle accosted one of Hillin’s crewmen by the garage and vowed, "You
bring that (expletive) back to the racetrack, and you won’t be able to roll the
car on the truck. That’s a promise."
Martinsville was another headache as
Richard was tagged very early into the wall and eventually finished 29th with
engine failure. Kyle’s day was even worse – he cut down tires within 200 laps,
spun once, and was held by NASCAR for two laps for supposedly causing an
unnecessary caution. Then with some 40 to go he lost his brakes, tagged the
wall, and a broken fuel line caused the car to erupt. Geoff Bodine, who’d fallen
out 300 laps earlier, ran onto the track with a fire extinguisher to help him,
and was joined by Tony Liberati, a Roush Racing crewman who’d started out years
earlier with Petty Enterprises.
After that, Talladega proved a stunningly
calm affair. Richard drafted in the lead pack all day and escaped contact with
the wall off Two when Charlie Glotzbach lost air while racing Richard and spun.
Kyle fell back early, worked his way back to the top ten, but with 13 to go he
nudged Wally Dallenbach, who in turn collided with Jimmy Spencer. Spencer shot
off the track, stood over ten feet off the ground on his left side door, and
flew over four hundred feet down the backstretch. He miraculously landed on four
wheels. When it was over Kyle finished tenth and Richard fifteenth.
It was The Winston that was the first real
highlight of the year for Richard. It was the first superspeedway race to be run
at night, and in his final running of the event, he battled hard en route to
ninth. But it was Kyle who made the headlines. He tagged Dale Earnhardt out of
the lead on the final lap – this caused Earnhardt to admiringly admit afterward,
"(Kyle) is a hell of a racer" – but Davey Allison dove underneath and
the two fused together at the stripe. Kyle hooked Allison and Davey socked the
wall in the tri-oval. Davey was knocked unconscious and injuries sustained by
two hard crashes the previous month were exacerbated.
The ensuing World 600 – the final daytime
running of the event – was something the 1992 season had generally lacked – a
tense, competitive race. Fords had completely monopolized the season so far, and
only now was GM up to fighting back. Kyle timed second and stormed into the lead
early on. Richard timed twelfth and stormed into the top ten, but his brakes
failed entering Turn Three and he hit the wall. Kyle pitted under this yellow
and roared through the field, eventually retaking the lead and dicing door to
door with Alan Kulwicki.
But in final stops under green with 55 to
go Dale Earnhardt came from several seconds down into the lead, and it was not
due to a good stop, but from speeding on pit road. As for Kyle, the handling
went away on the final set of tires and he finished a disappointing third.
Two highlights then greeted Richard – the
first came at Pocono in June. Richard worked his way to 15th and was still
moving up when he pitted under green, and then the yellow flew, trapping him two
laps down. Kyle, meanwhile, had a steady day en route to sixth. Kyle then
finished fourth to Richard’s 15th at Michigan.
Then came Richard’s final race at Daytona,
and he stunned the field by timing second. When Sterling Marlin won his third
pole of the year there, the crowd booed loudly. "Boys," Sterling
radioed his crew, "I think I done messed up." From there Richard had a
hectic schedule of appearances, including a public birthday bash in his honor
led by Kyle. He also wore his driver’s uniform during the two-hour pre-race
ceremony that included a speech by President Bush.
"All the hullabaloo finally caught up
with me," Richard said later. "I just wasn’t mentally and physically
ready." He did, though, burst past Sterling Marlin on the start and edged
him out to lead the opening five laps. Richard finally needed a relief driver
but Eddie Bierschwale was too short, so the car had to be parked.
At Pocono two weeks later Richard timed
seventh, but teams had taken to using the Jericho transmission and shift gears
every lap to get off Pocono’s flat, differing corners. Richard did not shift and
it hurt his lap times en route to a disappointing 20th. Kyle had a much better
day, finishing seventh. It was much the same a week later at Talladega – Kyle
ran strong all day and finished sixth; Richard qualified fourth, got shuffled
back, but rallied to finish 15th.
It was at this point that Kyle’s
increasingly frustrating season took a decisive turn. The team had lobbied
NASCAR all season because of the Pontiac’s weak rear down force. But during a
test at Watkins Glen, the team decided to try a different tack – they widened
the nose slightly, and suddenly the car was much faster than it had been before.
It paid off when the Watkins Glen Grand Prix came about in August, as Kyle
stormed to his first win of the season.
Now Kyle became one of the hottest drivers
in the series. At Michigan he clawed his way to third, but finished sixth on
late splash-and-go stops. When Harry Gant used better mileage to take what
turned out to be his final win, Kyle was incensed: "The fans deserve to see
a good race and all of a sudden they see a guy who’d run 20th all day win the
thing. It’s not fair to us and it isn’t fair to the fans."
Kyle bagged fourth at Bristol and third at
Dover, then at Martinsville he won the pole but had to wait until Monday to race
as rains washed out Sunday. Once the race started Kyle led most of the first 150
laps. He was leading by eight seconds when he ran out of gas. Twenty laps later
he was hit by Geoff Bodine as he came up to lap him. He lost a lap but got it
back amid an epidemic of crashes – Benny Philips described the race as
"road warriors at a street brawl." Kyle made up the lap but when Davey
Allison and Rusty Wallace spun at Lap 370 Kyle got drop-kicked by Dick Trickle
and lost two laps stuck in rain-soaked grass – "Just send a wrecker,"
Kyle growled. He roared through the field, caught two quick yellows, and by Lap
440 was back on the lead lap. "We had a car and a motor that killed them
all day," Kyle said afterward. He ultimately wound up a disappointing
fourth.
While Kyle was climbing the point ladder,
Richard was finishing up the season and continuing his search for a new driver.
In mid-season came word that Petty had his sights on sophomore driver Ted
Musgrave, who had stunned the sport with stellar efforts at Michigan and Pocono
in D.K. Ulrich’s car under the leadership of Buddy Parrott. When Richard asked
Musgrave if he wanted to run the #43 car, Musgrave, taken aback by the offer,
declined.
General Motors then tried to push road
racer Tom Kendall on Richard, but a poor test with Kendall at North Wilkesboro
axed the offer. It wasn’t until November that Rick Wilson, out of a ride after
the Daytona 500, was tabbed. "We chose Rick Wilson," Richard wrote,
"because we felt he had the energy and aggressiveness to help us move to
the front again….he was a racer, not a driver."
That, though, was for 1993; 1992 still had
to be finished. At Charlotte Kyle timed 20th and stormed through the field into
the lead by Lap 68. He led 130 laps but the handle went away late and he
finished third. "Same thing happened here in May," Kyle growled.
"We’ve got to figure out what’s causing it." Robin Pemberton for his
part said, "This racetrack changes a lot. We adjusted the car in the right
direction, but not enough before Mark (Martin) took the lead."
In the race Bill Elliott, the point title
in his control two races earlier, was running eighth and had Davey Allison four
laps down. But Elliott broke a sway bar and finished 30th; this meant that now
the top six, including Kyle, were within 114 points of Elliott.
It got even closer at Rockingham. Robin
Pemberton had figured out what went wrong in February, and this time Kyle
administered the worst whipping a field had seen in years, leading 484 laps,
putting all but Ernie Irvan a lap down, and winning despite scraping the first
turn apron on a late restart putting Dale Earnhardt a lap down – "Boy,
we’re gonna have to watch the rest of this, it’s gonna be boring," Geoff
Bodine joked after he fell out at halfway. For his effort Kyle won $153,000,
padded vastly by uncollected Unocal pole bonus money; he also moved to fourth in
points, only 97 behind Elliott.
It was turned upside down at Phoenix –
Elliott broke early, limped home 31st, and Davey Allison bagged an unexpected
clutch win; now Allison led the points by 30 over Alan Kulwicki and 40 over
Elliott, with Kyle fifth in points, just one behind Harry Gant and fifteen ahead
of Mark Martin, all within some 60 points of the lead. All of this made the
electricity entering the season finale at Atlanta all the greater – the point
battle was coming down to the wire and Richard Petty had one more race to run.
When Rick Mast surprised the sport by winning the pole, the electricity was even
greater.
And then came the race itself, begun after
Kyle, Sharon, Lisa, and Rebecca Petty gave the command, "Daddy, Start Your
Engine!"
The race started with a bang – a savage
seven-car melee in which Brett Bodine was T-boned in the door by Hut Stricklin.
The race then ran green until green-flag stops ensued; Kyle pitted, and then
Michael Waltrip crashed. Now a lap down, Kyle fought hard to get his lap back as
Bill Elliott, Alan Kulwicki, and Mark Martin fought for the lead. Davey Allison
ran steady, needing only a top five to clinch the title.
At Lap 93 the field had gone back green
when Ken Schrader collected Dick Trickle and both hammered the pit wall on the main straight.
Behind them the field stacked up and Wally Dallenbach, Darrell Waltrip, and Rich
Bickle were involved. But when the smoke cleared Richard Petty’s Pontiac emerged
on fire – "My God!" one of the photographers yelled. Petty stopped at
a fire truck in the Turn One infield. "I think all them cats wanted an
autograph, because none of them brought a fire extinguisher. I had to holler at
them to bring one." In doing so, Richard cussed at them. The fire was
quickly extinguished and Richard saluted the relieved crowd.
Kyle was initially unaffected, but during
the yellow he hit some debris that bent sheet metal near the right front tire.
He restarted deep in the pack and had to race hard to catch back up. He got a
break in terms of points when Mark Martin blew his engine.
Robbie Loomis and the crew went to work to
fix the car enough for Richard to run one final lap. He told his daughters his
plan, and they hugged him in pride.
But around Lap 250 the decisive moment of
the season occurred – running third, Ernie Irvan lost control in Four and shot
into Davey Allison. Both cars came to a stop at the stripe, and Allison’s title
was now gone. Racing back to the stripe, leader Alan Kulwicki slowed and let
Kyle back onto the lead lap. "He let me have it, man," Kyle radioed.
"God, I appreciate that."
It was in keeping with Kulwicki’s
relationship with Kyle. The two were close pals in spite of Alan’s reputation
for aloofness from the rest of the drivers. Alan’s team had agreed to let Kyle
get his lap back after a quick negotiation between crew chief Paul Andrews and
Felix Sabates.
Kulwicki’s team calculated how many laps
they had to lead to clinch the five-point bonus for most laps led, a bonus that
would wipe out any bonus Elliott got from winning the race and give the title to
Alan by ten if he finished second in the race. When they calculated that they
had the bonus, Kulwicki pitted and finished second to Elliott, in the closest
point finish ever, surpassing Richard’s 1979 rally over Waltrip.
But for Kyle, the race ended when a rocker
arm snapped and tore out a valve with 30 to go. Kyle limped onward and was
nearly black flagged by NASCAR, but he finished 16th, enough to bag fifth in
points, by far his best point finish ever. Richard, meanwhile, came back out on
the final lap and ran the last lap of his race-driving career. With Elliott the
race winner and Kulwicki the champion, Richard then ran a ceremonial final lap
in salute to the cheering fans. The crowd of 162,000 stayed around well after
the race was over. "That was kind of funny," Richard said.
"Nobody left. There was so much going on. You had a race winner, a new
champion, and me running my last race. I wish we had this much enthusiasm for
all the races."
And for Richard, it was on to a
"new" career as full-time tam owner. For Kyle, it was on to his
"new" role as the driving force – literal and otherwise – of the Petty
family.
TO BE CONTINUED