MBNA 400: A Salute to Heroes - Kyle Petty Notes

Kyle Petty Notes, Quotes: MBNA 400
‘Attitude is everything at a place like Dover’

Kyle Petty and the #45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge team head to the demanding one-mile Dover (Del.) International Speedway this week for Sunday’s MBNA 400 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race. Petty, who knows the thrill of victory at Dover, and his fellow competitors will be running at the track well-monikered as “The Monster Mile.”

Petty, 43, will be making his 691st 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 $18 million.

The thoughts of Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge driver Kyle Petty heading into the MBNA 500:

“Your attitude plays a big role in how well you do at Dover.

“Go into Dover with a bad attitude towards the place, and odds are pretty big that you are going to have a bad day. A good attitude doesn’t guarantee you a good day, but it sure improves the odds of you having one. You don’t have to love it because you love it but, if you are going to do well there, you have to love it. If you dread it or just don’t feel good about it or whatever, you don’t stand a chance. The place is tough, really tough. The races can be pretty hard. You have to be in great shape. But you’d better walk in there thinking, ‘Man, I really love this place. I can run well here,’ or it’s going to be a long weekend.

“A guy tells me he doesn’t like running a race track – Dover or anywhere else – and I know I’ve pretty well got him beat. Better put, he has already beat himself, so I probably don’t have to worry about him.

“I like running at Dover, which might be the reason I do okay there a lot of times. It’s easy to get into a rhythm because the track is symmetrical and you can use that to your advantage, especially if you have a pretty good setup. Usually, everybody racing around you is in something of the same rhythm, so that can be helpful too. It’s when you are having to come out of that rhythm to pass somebody or to get around some slower cars that you have to work hard to get back into what was working for you to begin with.

“You just prepare. You prepare mentally, and you prepare physically. It’s going to be long and it’s going to be hot and you are going to be worn out when you are done. But you go into the race weekend knowing all of that.

“This stretch of races – Charlotte, Dover and on into June and July – are when we really start feeling the heat. I’m not talking about pressure either, but temperature. Wrestling one of these 3,400-pound cars can be a handful by itself a lot of times but add in the really high temperatures we can get sometimes, and it makes it tougher. Dover isn’t far from the ocean either, so humidity is always a big issue there. A hot day at Dover can be really, really rough on a driver.

“You can’t count on the heat leaving quickly either, especially tracks like Dover or Bristol or the more ‘stadium-like’ speedways. Dover is like racing in a valley. The ‘mountains’ are all the way around, mostly at each end of the track where the turns are banked the most, but the straightaways are banked a good bit too. You race down in a hole. If you ever see the sky, you know you’re in trouble.

“I’m ready to get going there. We’ve had good runs at Dover in the past, and I’m looking forward to a good day with this Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge team again this week.”