[h=2]Richard Petty on Daytona 500s past and present[/h] Monday, 27 February 2017


By Eric Johnson / Images by Nigel Kinrade and NASCAR archive

It's funny getting an audience with the King. Even with racecars roaring by intermittently off in the high banks distance and basically creating a jet wash wall of sound, he almost has a rhythm in the way he speaks. Rising action, falling action, almost perfectly timed pauses – his very own comprehension of the English language – Richard Petty speaks like no other. And whether he means it or not, it just all sort of makes perfect sense.
Petty has been coming to Daytona International Speedway since they pulled the curtain back on the place for the First Annual 500 Mile NASCAR International Sweepstakes at Daytona in 1959. While his engine coughed up some valve-and-cam pieces and he only ran eight laps in total, he shook it off to fight another day. In fact, five years later he won the thing and we all know happened as the years clicked off.
Taking a quick break from a seemingly endless line of fans, sponsors and well-wishers at 2017 Daytona 500, the King talked about the Great American Race and the 31-degree talking walls of the house Big Bill France built. High banks, high drama, high hopes and a higher calling, in his 32 year-run at the Daytona 500, there just isn't a person on planet earth who knows more about this larger than life kaleidoscope of speed, sound and vision. Take it away King Richard.
Richard, you were here and ready to roll at the first Daytona 500 in 1959. What did you think of this place? I can't even begin to imagine what this all looked like to you and all of your competitors who showed up to race.
"When we showed up here, the first turn looked like it was 10 miles away. There was nothing in the infield. No buildings or anything. Up to then the biggest thing we had ever seen was Darlington, which was a little more than a mile. I was a 21-year-old kid and my eyes were about yeah big. It was fantastic to see it the first time."
What did your father Lee think? Was he as blown away as you?
"Yeah, it amazed him because he had never been on anything that big. The guys that had raced before on the other tracks, it took them a while to adapt to this kind of racetrack. To me, I had no experience so anything was new to me. The other guys had to unlearn in order to learn, so it took him a little while to adjust to it."
When you first went out in the car, what did you think? I mean the banking alone...
"We didn't run but 130 mile an hour, but that was unheard of in 1959. I mean, that was flat flying. So you go out and you run and the place is so big that you had no idea you were running wide open. You had no idea whether you were running 80 mile an hour or 280, you know what I mean? You'd come in and they'd say, 'You run 130,' and I'd say, 'I done what?' I'd never been that fast in my life, but you just didn't realize it."
And you had it pinned all the way around, huh?
"Yeah, the track was so big that you got no sensation of speed because the infield was way away from you and the grandstands were way away from you. The sensation of speed was more there when everything was close to you. When you're running 100 mile an hour and the fence is real close, you feel like you're running 200 mile an hour. Here, you run 200 mile an hour and you don't realize it."
What about the car back then? Did it get real squirrelly?
"No, no, the cars were very stable at 130 mile an hour, 140. We didn't get into the speed where handling really made a whole lot of difference. We just got in the car and didn't know any kind of setup or anything. We just had some springs in the car and they worked. Then, over a period of years, we kept getting faster and faster and we had to start working on the suspension. After we got the suspension figured out, they started working on aerodynamics and all that stuff."
Your dad Lee won the first Daytona 500 (pictured above, No. 42). After they sorted out who won it and he was declared the first winner, did you guys have any sort of idea of just what a huge deal this race and this track would become? Or was it more like, "Hey, we won this thing. That's kind of cool..."?
"Yeah, I think he won $19,000 or something for winning the race and that was a huge deal because I think at that time if you won a race, it was like $1,000 or something – maybe $1,500 at some of the bigger races. Winning $19,000, man, you thought you was rich!
"You know up until 1959, Darlington was our superspeedway. And then even three or four years after Daytona, Darlington was still the place everybody wanted to win. By 1964, Daytona had maybe not replaced Darlington, but was standing beside it, you know what I mean? Then Daytona got to be bigger and bigger and bigger. Daytona was the first superspeedway race I won. I won a bunch of short track races, but never a superspeedway. That year, in '64, Chrysler came out with the Hemi (note: A 426 cubic-inch engine with hemispherical combustion chambers) and we just had them outclassed, so it made it easy from that standpoint."