Pop Secret 500 - Kyle Petty Notes

Kyle Petty Notes, Quotes: Pop Secret 500
Missing Darlington but excited by California

For one of the very few times in his life, Kyle Petty will not be spending the Labor Day weekend in Darlington, S.C. He and his #45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge team will, instead, be on the West Coast.

The NASCAR Nextel Cup Series moves the Labor Day weekend to the two-mile California Speedway and a night race Sunday night at the two-mile speedway. The traditional Southern 500 no longer exists.

Petty, 44, will be making his 703rd career start this weekend. He is 10th on the all-time list in NASCAR Cup career starts, and fourth among active drivers. His eight career victories place him 45th on NASCAR's all-time list in 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 $19 million.

The thoughts of Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge driver Kyle Petty heading into California:

"Yeah, it will be different going to California instead of Darlington this week. After years and years of doing something - like going to Darlington for the Southern 500 on the Labor Day weekend - in some ways it will seem kind of strange no longer doing that. But once you are in place and working on the race car, where you are doesn't really cross your mind other than how it affects how you are running.

"A second race at California - just like a second race at Texas and Phoenix - are just part of the growth of the sport. You don't have a lot of choices when it comes to business these days, including the business of sports. If you are not moving ahead, then you are falling behind. There isn't any middle ground. I understand the moves they are making, and they are important moves for our sport.

"That said, yeah, it is sad there isn't a Southern 500 anymore. When it comes to pure stock car racing, the Southern 500 is our heart. That is our tradition. Yeah, the dirt tracks and the old bullrings and all of those kinds of things were important, but Darlington is where we started. That's where superspeedway racing started. You had race winners at Hickory Speedway but you had stars winning races at Darlington. Good race car drivers won on the bullrings - great race car drivers won the Southern 500.

"As hot as it could get there and as miserable as the weather could be, Darlington is special. The Southern 500 is special. While I am grateful I won't see mosquitoes big enough to pick somebody up and carry them off, I will still miss the Southern 500.

"That doesn't mean the Pop Secret 500 isn't a big race because it is. Great crowd, under the lights - it's going to be huge in a lot of ways. Television has played a big role in that, and tracks like California are feeding the hunger for stock car racing all over the country.

"Every race is big because we have so many people watching and following us. Say 15 years ago, we didn't even have all of our races on television and we were running a lot fewer races than we are running today. Look at it that way. A race at, say, Nashville in the mid 1980's might have had a total of 20,000 people seeing the race. Now, our smallest crowd is way into the millions when you count television.

"For the sponsors, the races don't get much bigger than southern California. The California market is a lot like Texas has been for us. The only difference is California was a much hotter NASCAR market at one time before things kind of cooled off there, and then we came back again. Texas was the same way.

"Twenty years ago, we were running races in Texas and southern California. We were at Texas World Speedway, and we were running two southern California races - not far from the new Fontana track in Ontario and down the road a little bit at Riverside (road course). The land got to be so valuable in Ontario that the track went away and, not long after that, Riverside was gone too. Texas World Speedway just couldn't draw. It was halfway between Dallas and Houston, which seemed to be perfect, but it was just far enough to be too far away from both cities. It was gone too.

"As the sport has grown, those markets have come back to us. The races at Texas have gained a ton of attention. The media in those areas is real strong, and they cover the sport on a regular basis too, not just when we're in town. The fan base there has gotten really strong really quick, and it's a great place for us to be. I don't see that area doing anything but growing for us in the future.

"That's a huge market for anybody, regardless of what kind of business. Shaq (Shaquille O'Neal) didn't go to the Lakers for the weather. I think in the long run he is going to regret leaving for Miami. LA is LA. No, you aren't guaranteed being a success just because you are in Los Angeles - our sport has been there before and it was tough going - but you need to be there to succeed. The NFL ended up having a pretty rough time there but you have to think pro football will come back there at some point but, so far, they have sort of set the Los Angeles area aside. There are two major league baseball teams that seem to do pretty well, but the NBA teams, one does great and the other kind of struggles some.

"Being here and having been here for a few years now is good for everybody. It's good for Georgia-Pacific, it's good for General Mills, it's good for the sport. There are just so many people out here, and being able to touch them through promotions or whatever is big - whether they come to the race or not, or watch the race on TV or not. All of the promotions that go on around the race, all that helps create interest.

"You have to work hard to make these things work, and you work a little harder in the bigger markets because you have so many more people to touch. There aren't any guarantees without hard work. If all Georgia-Pacific did was buy a sponsorship, paint their name on the side of the car and wait for the business to roll in, that wouldn't be a very successful program. But they start with the sponsorship and they work it and promote it and use it every way they can to market. They have to have great products, which they do, and they have to market them well, which they do. That makes them successful.

"At Petty Enterprises we do the same thing with every sponsor. We have our marketing people set up to make the programs work for the sponsors. I don't know of another race team that, from car owner to driver to marketing department to crew to everywhere else on the team, works as hard and is as willing to work hard as we are. You have to go that extra step to make things work. You have to be willing to go that extra mile to make things work. And going to southern California this weekend, this is one of those places where you have to do the things you need to do from a marketing standpoint as well as a racing standpoint.

"Even though we get two shots at the southern California market as a race team, every race we run is important for us. We want to make the most of it as a race team. We'd like to have a really good run with this Georgia-Pacific Dodge at that speedway. We're going to do what we can to do to just that."