Subway 400 - Kyle Petty Notes

Kyle Petty Notes, Quotes: Subway 400
‘The season starts at Rockingham’

Kyle Petty

The #45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge team heads to the 1.017-mile North Carolina Speedway near Rockingham this week with a driver who knows what it’s like to excel there.

Kyle Petty is one of the most successful NASCAR Winston Cup drivers in the speedway’s history, and is third among active drivers for career wins there. At one point in the early 90's, he was able to win three of six consecutive races, and has almost always been strong there.

Petty, 42, will be making his 647th 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/Brawny Dodge driver Kyle Petty heading into Rockingham:

‘Back in the early 90s when I drove for Felix (Sabates) and Robin (Pemberton) and I were together with the Mello Yello car and with the Peak car there for two or three years, for some reason we hit on a really good combination for Rockingham with John Wilson building the engines and with the Goodyear tire combination and with the race track being worn out like it was at the time and with the Pontiacs we had at the time. We had a really good combination of people and all I had to do was sit in it and turn left when I got in the corners. I don't know if it was as much me as it was everybody else because I am still doing the same thing.

“Rockingham is a good place for us to go. Coming off of Daytona and being gone for 10 or 15 days at a time and being able to spend the night at home in your own bed, it adds a little something going down there.

“We had some good things happen for our teams at Daytona. What we have to do is play off the good things that happened and get the momentum really going. The season starts here. Daytona is Daytona, and those points and everything are important, but the season starts with Rockingham.

“Daytona is just a different deal entirely. It’s a race within itself, and can be a season within itself. A bad Daytona 500 week can play on you for the first part of the season; a good Daytona 500 week can mean a lot of positive things. It’s not a definite thing. Hey, look at Tony Stewart last year (the 2002 NASCAR Winston Cup champion finished last in the Daytona 500).

“But you have to really get rolling this week. We start getting into the routine with Rockingham. Travel on Thursday, qualify on Friday, final practices Saturday, race on Sunday. Then we turn around and do the same thing the next week in Vegas, then the next week in Atlanta, and on down the line.

“A good Daytona can give you a lot but a good Rockingham can too. A good Rockingham can undo a not-so-good Daytona. It can give you the impetus you need that carries you on into Vegas and Atlanta and on and on.

“The way this sport is you can’t get too happy after a win or too down after a loss. There just isn’t time for it. But a really good run can help you the next week just in everybody’s attitude. A couple of really good runs in a row can build that even more, and you can get some momentum going. Success breeds success. Maybe that happens everywhere but it can really happen in stock car racing. And that is what you are trying to do every week.

“That’s what we’re doing with this Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge this week, working on building that momentum. By Sunday night, we’ll know how things stand.”

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