Food City 500 - Kyle Petty Notes

Kyle Petty Notes, Quotes: Food City 500
Bristol takes a toll on cars, and on drivers too

Heading to a speedway where he and Petty Enterprises are known for their prowess, Kyle Petty and the #45 Georgia-Pacific Dodge team move to the high-banked, high-speed .533-mile Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway this week for Sunday’s Food City 500.

Petty, 42, will be making his 651st career start this weekend. He is 11th on the all-time list in NASCAR Winston Cup career starts, and fourth among active drivers. His eight career victories place him 45th on NASCAR’s all-time list in Winston Cup wins. One of the most recognizable names in international motorsports, as is his sponsor, Georgia-Pacific, Petty’s driving career began with a five-race season in 1979. The native of Level Cross, N.C., has won nearly $16 million.

The thoughts of Georgia-Pacific Dodge driver Kyle Petty heading into Bristol:

“It was something of a milestone last week at Darlington, I guess. But you sit there and look at it and think, ‘650 races. What does that mean?’ Basically, it just means a lot of track time and a lot of experience, I guess. And now I’m on the back side of 1,300 races (laughs).

“If the first 650 races had all been at Bristol, well, I’m not sure I would have made 650 races. Like everybody else, I have a lot of fun running there but the place just takes a toll on your car and on your body. It’s pretty rare to run 500 laps at Bristol and not wake up feeling pretty sore the next morning. You have been beating, banging, nudging, and all of that all night long, and it throws you around a little bit in the car.

“With all of the safety devices and rib protectors and leg extenders and all of those things in the cars these days, you don’t get thrown around like you used to, but it is still a pretty physical race. A lot of times I’ve felt like the car looked when the race was over.

“Still, short tracks are fun for drivers. They are fun for fans. In fact, outside of fabricators and body men, I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t like racing on the short tracks.

“If you don’t like short tracks, you just don’t get what stock car racing is all about. If you don’t appreciate the beating and banging and rubbing that goes with short track racing, you just have to spend a little bit more time contemplating stock car racing. The Daytona 500, the Southern 500, those races might have been the ones that put NASCAR on the map, but the tracks like the Bristols and the Martinsvilles and the Richmonds are the ones that made NASCAR go before there was a map.

“A lot of that is variety. In my opinion, you need different kinds of tracks. They say that Winston Cup racing is based on teams and drivers being able to run well on every conceivable type of track. Well, the short tracks are a big, big part of that. Short tracks are a huge part of this sport’s history. If we ran every weekend at a place with the same length and the same banking, the races would be boring. I think that’s obvious. The same guys would win, the same teams, in the same way. The variety is good.

“The element of surprise is always left for drivers and teams at Bristol. It never leaves. There’s always something new to deal with. When they changed the track from asphalt to concrete, I liked it. I liked it as asphalt and I liked it as concrete. When they changed the pit setup - leaving two pit roads but pretending there was one - it made sense. I liked that too. But that is some variety, huh?

“Hey, there’s even variety in the wrecks at Bristol. Some go into the wall, some go into each other. Sometimes it’s an engine burping oil that a car hits, sometimes it’s just losing it. There’s always a little tagging, sometimes a little too much tagging. Sometimes you just wreck for absolutely no reason at all. I’ve seen more than one guy climb out of his car, look at it, look out in space, and act like, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Sometimes you look at a replay on TV, and you can’t tell what happened either.

“The racing is close and there are always enough cautions that if somebody is starting to run away, the yellow flag can just reel him back in again. You try to run by yourself but, most of the time, you’re working your way through traffic - whether you are trying to get away or trying to catch up.

“Our deal is just going to be the best you can be, and work the traffic best you can. Luck and skill go hand-in-hand at Bristol - the luckier you are, the better driver you are; the better driver you are, the luckier you are.

“And we’ll be counting on both of those with this Georgia-Pacific Dodge this weekend.”

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