At 79, Richard Petty, a Bastion of Nascar, Sticks to What He Knows

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series - Full Race - Axalta "We Paint Winners" 400

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. It was a different time, Richard Petty kept saying, not nostalgically, but more in that matter-of-fact way that has made him the de facto spokesman for a sport that he once dominated like no other racecar driver before or since.

The one thing that hasnt changed is the racetrack itself, Petty said about the Daytona International Speedway, hours before Saturday nights Coke Zero 400, which Brad Keselowski won in a thrilling finish that had a tight pack of drivers jostling for position on the final lap.

As far as everything at the racetrack, around the racetrack, the people have changed, the cars have changed, the rules have changed, but the racetrack stays the same, Petty said.

As he talked, Petty poked at a birthday cake, licking frosting off his finger and flashing that famous, crooked smile beneath a bristly mustache that suspiciously showed no signs of gray. He turned 79 on Saturday, and he has seen a lot as the son of a racecar driver, as a racecar driver himself, as the father and grandfather of racecar drivers, and now as the owner of Richard Petty Motorsports.

People ask me what it feels like to be 79, he said, smiling. I dont know. Ive never been here before.

But he has been a fixture here at the Daytona International Speedway. He won his Nascar-record 200th and final race almost exactly 32 years ago, at what was then called the Firecracker 400. It was back when the race was an even more star-spangled event than it is today, when it was run on the Fourth of July, instead of on the closest Saturday.

The race also used to start at 10 a.m., instead of at night, which meant that it had almost always ended before the Florida summer rains began, causing delays and havoc on start and finishing times.

It was more like a family vacation back then, Petty said as a steady downpour tap-danced on an overhead awning near the garage area of the speedways infield. Wed get done racing and be at the beach by 1:30.

He motioned overhead with a frosting-coated finger.

And we didnt have to deal with this, he said.

Last year, because of its evening start and ongoing rain delays, the race did not end until 2:40 a.m. Hopefully, that wont happen again, Petty said, explaining how over the years the race had capitulated to the whims and wishes of television, its name shifting from the Medal of Freedom 400 to the Firecracker 400 to the Fill-In-Sponsors-Name-Here 400.

But the track has remained the same, and on Saturday night, after the skies had cleared and the lights had come on, Petty and race fans were treated to a vintage race at Daytona, featuring hard driving and a pileup that affected 22 cars.

For a while, it seemed as if there would not be any incident on the track. But on Lap 90, a little more than halfway into the race, Jamie McMurray moved low into Kyle Larson at the end of the front stretch. He was then bumped by Jimmie Johnson. What followed was 22 cars bumping and scraping, piling and plowing into one another.

In all, the race had 27 lead changes featuring 13 drivers before an ecstatic Keselowski took the checkered flag. It was his first win at Daytona, and he certainly earned it, having led for a race-high 115 of 161 laps.

I dont care if it isnt the 500, were still in victory lane, Keselowski said. This is huge. I love this place.

One of the drivers who was taken out by the 22-car pileup was Dale Earnhardt Jr., the defending Coke Zero champion, who has now crashed in all three restrictor-plate races this year.

Not only was Earnhardt the defending champion, but this was also the 15-year anniversary of perhaps the most emotionally charged race at the track. On Feb. 22, 2001, his father, Dale Earnhardt, died in a crash on the final turn of the final lap at the Daytona 500. Less than five months later, in the first race at the speedway since that event, the younger Earnhardt won what was then called the Pepsi 400.

Before that, probably the most memorable finish at the race came in 1984. It was on the Fourth of July that year when Ronald Reagan became the first sitting president to announce, Start your engines from Air Force One, doing so from a telephone as his plane flew into a nearby airport.

Petty won on that day, his 200th and, as it turned out, final Nascar victory.

It was a long time ago, but it was the biggest thing that happened to us, Petty said. Winning and then getting to meet the president, it was the pinnacle of my career.

Thirty-two years later, Keselowski held similar feelings about his victory.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/sports/autoracing/at-79-richard-petty-a-bastion-of-nascar-sticks-to-what-he-knows.html