Dodge/Save Mart 350 - Kyle Petty Notes

Kyle Petty Notes, Quotes: Sonoma 350

‘Two approaches to road course racing’

One of NASCAR’s top road course racers, Kyle Petty and the #45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge team head to the Sears Point (Calif.) Raceway road course this week for Sunday’s Save Mart 350. Petty is a regular front-runner on NASCAR’s road courses, and is considered by most to be one of the best road course racers among all stock car racers.

Petty, 42, will be making his 660th 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 over $16 million.

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

“There are two ways to get around a road course, and they can be radically different. At least, as far as I have seen they are radically different.

“First of all, you have to realize these 3,400-pound stock cars aren’t the types of things you tip-toe around in. Everything you talk about with stock cars on road courses is relative. This isn’t Formula One and this isn’t Indy cars. Anybody who tries to make it either one of those is going to come out on the short end of the stick.

“There are two types of driving styles for stock cars on road courses. One is the ‘hands over elbows’ approach, which is slamming onto the gas until you have to slam on the brakes, turning that thing as hard as you can turn it in the direction you want to go, and then turning back in the other direction while you’re slamming back on the gas again and getting ready for the next turn. The other is what we call ‘finesse’ type of driving, that says you hit your marks, you ease out of the gas, ease into the gas, ease onto the brakes, ease off of the brakes, stuff like that.

“The hot-shot Formula One guy would call our ‘finesse’ guys his ‘hands over elbows’ guys. Then again, this is stock car racing. If you can’t read the word ‘Georgia-Pacific’ on the side of my car in the turns, maybe I’m not going hard enough.

“Probably the best way to approach a road course race in one of these big stock cars is a combination of the two. Trying to ‘take it easy’ is like an elephant trying to sneak downstairs to get the peanut butter out of the refrigerator. But you can’t be running like it’s a police chase out there either. Do that and your car isn’t going to last through qualifying, much less the whole race.

“When you’re by yourself on the track, like during qualifying, you’re trying to hit your marks and be as precise as you can, but you also have to throw the car into a couple of turns and jerk it out of there too. The deal is, outside of qualifying, you don’t have hardly any time when you are out there all by yourself.

“You still want to hit your marks but a lot of times, there is somebody already there. So you have to adjust. Now the guys from the ‘hands over elbows’ school look at that a little differently. If somebody is on their mark, they just root them out of the way. Besides the fact that you’re not going to make too many friends with that kind of approach, it takes a pretty serious toll on your car too. If you are using other cars to bank off of every time you go through a turn, your car just isn’t going to make it to the end of the race - either it’s going to break or somebody is going to break you.

“I like the road courses. I’d say there are maybe 10 drivers out here who really like them, another 20 who kind of tolerate them and another 10-15 who absolutely hate them. You go into a road course race and you figure you don’t even have to worry about those 10-15 who hate them. They are beat long before they get on the plane to California. They’ll go out and maybe even run pretty decent, but they aren’t ever going to be much of a threat. They beat themselves. The 20 who tolerate them can go either way. Usually those guys get out there and, if they are running some halfway decent times, start feeling better about road courses, get a little bit better attitude and you see it in their times. If they don’t have good times right off the bat, they usually give up early and start thinking about Daytona.

“Me, it’s fun. It’s a different kind of racing and I like that. The NASCAR Winston Cup Series was built on running all kinds of different tracks. We run road courses and giant superspeedways and short tracks and even a triangle. I think that’s what makes the championship such a big deal. Man, if you can win that thing, you have proven you are really good on any kind of race track. And we run every kind of race track.

“We only do this twice a year but everybody at Petty Enterprises takes it pretty seriously. We think we can shine for Georgia-Pacific and Dodge and all of the people who are supporting us.”

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