Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Kyle Petty Interview

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

NASCAR legend Kyle Petty joins Kevin Harvick for a fascinating conversation about his upbringing in the racing world, the influence of his father, Richard Petty, and grandfather, Lee Petty, and how their legacy shaped the sport. Petty shares incredible behind-the-scenes stories from his time in NASCAR, reflecting on the evolution of racing and the moments that defined his career. Don’t miss this must-watch interview packed with history, insight, and never-before-heard tales from one of racing’s most iconic families! 0:25 - Kyle Petty Joins the Show! 6:45 - Racing Start/Memorable Moments 25:55 - How Racing Has Changed 36:44 - First Cars Story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People think it's okay to dive into the last corner and take somebody out. People think it's okay to make it six wide where it should be too wide. You know, people think it's okay. And they think the fans love it and they think it's okay, but it's not okay. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by Echo Park Automotive and NASCAR on Fox. I'm Kevin Harvick. And our guest this week is Kyle Petty. Yeah, it's crazy.

Look, man, I don't think that, well, first thanks for being. here. I don't think people understand that haven't been around you a lot. And we always go through cycles of fans and introducing people. And so for me, these conversations, I have these, I have these notes that I write down, but usually these conversations always go in a direction that I have no idea, because you have some of the best stories that I've ever heard. All of my conversations go in a direction. I love that, though. And so what have you been up to? What do you, what's your world look like in today's life. So nothing and a lot, all at the same time. You know how it is. So we've got three little boys. Overton is six and a half. Cotton is four and a half. And DeVant is two

and a half. Overton, I got him a little Honda 50 for his birthday. About the time he turned six. So I just went this last Saturday and got Cotton. He's four and a half. I got him a little Honda 50. And I got my wife, Morgan, Buscadero, which is like a 110. They come out of Cedar City, Utah. So I'm getting them all on motorcycles. I know you're opposite. You got four tires. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I started on two. So we're going the two-wheel route. So mostly go up my dad's, take a chainsaw, take a side-by-side, cut trails through the woods, motorcross track, got to do all that stuff. Let me explain to you my motorcycle career. So my motorcycle career, so my motorcycle career, rear went like this, Kyle. I had never ridden a motorcycle in my life. My buddies were like,

I was probably 17, 18 year old. And they're like, hey, take this bike, go ride it. Yep. Let's go. Take off. I go up the mountain. We go up the trail, riding a bike. I'm scared to death. Tire goes flat, fall off the side of the mountain, slide down the mountain. And I got to drag this motorcycle back up to the top of the mountain. And I got to figure out how to get it home. We've got no tire. So I drive this thing home. I park it in a garage. And that's the the first and only time that I ever rode a motorcycle in my whole life. So my dad came home. He tells his story.

So he went to Daytona. Bought it from a guy in Daytona. Bought this little Yamaha 80. So I want you to picture this now. So it's a little Yamaha 80 with a number plate on the front, number plates on the side. It's a little motorcross bike back in the late 60s. They had no clue how fast it would run. Yeah.

So they take it out on the racetrack because that's what you do. Right. So he's Richard Petty. so he's driving this little Yamaha 80 behind a rental car. And they finally got it in a draft, it would run like 48 miles an hour. So he's like, well, he's never going to be drafting. So 40 miles an hour is good. Brings it home and gives it to me, shows me where the clutch is, shows me how to work it.

I'm so small at the time, or the bike's so big. I have to crank it on the kickstand. Okay? So you have to lean it over, crank it on the kickstand. And I got really good at putting it in first ski. and popping it up, taking off, kicking the kickstown, and riding it. And no matter where I was at, I would have to slow down, slow down, slow down, jump off and run beside of it to get it to stop. You know what I mean? That's the only way I could ride it, you know, because it couldn't touch the ground.

Yeah. So it took me about six months to touch the ground. How did that, I mean, did you dump it over a bunch of times? Oh, are you kidding me? So there was a, there was an orthopedic surgeon in Greengeboro at the time. His name was Dr. Sue. And we didn't have speed dial in the late 60s, early 70s, but his number was prominently displayed beside my phone. One day, one day I was coming home from some friend's house, and it was late. Not supposed to ride on the highway, but that was the quickest way home. So I jumped out on the highway, and I'm hauling the mail, just, you know,

and I come across the front yard there at my granddad's house, and there's a telephone pole with a guide wire. You know, the wire that comes down. I hit that wire. Oh, yeah. I've been there. Wide open, hit that wire. Bike stops, throws me over.

I crawl probably 200 yards from the middle of my granddad's front yard over to our house. I'll crawl up onto the front porch of the house we lived in, dragging my leg, dragging my leg. No, my ankle's broke. Just dragging my leg. Knocked on the front door, my mom opens the door, looks straight down at me and says, I'll bring the car around, and closes the door. She doesn't ask me how I am. She doesn't ask me anything.

She just brings the car around. I crawl off the porch, get in the car, warcast. She knew exactly that we had a problem. Wrist, ankles, collarbones, ribs. Yeah, I was beat up before I ever got in a race car. Isn't it amazing how much different, like, life is for kids now compared to how you grew up or I grew up? Because I didn't have a motorcycle that I was riding around,

but I would take my bicycle and we would ride it everywhere, or I would just take my parents' car and while they were at work and drive that when I was 13, 14 years old and drive it around. I had this box fan that we raised carts out of, And when I thought my parents were at work, and that's what I would drive around. I'd take it out of the back of the house. And me and my friends would load up

and take what we thought were the back roads. And we'd go do what we wanted to do. So my dad, he won Daytona and 71, 72, right along in there. Anyhow, so they gave him a roadrunner. This baby was beautiful. They gave him a roadrunner for a car, but winning a race. For winning the race.

Plymouth gave it to him. So it was purple with a white leather interior and a half-white vinyl. time. I mean, it was a donk before there was donks. Yeah. Okay, that's the way. So we would drive it to the end of the driveway and set in it and catch the bus in the morning. And then we would drive at home when we were like nine, ten years old. We did the same thing. We drove every, when I played Little League baseball at the ball field, you could pull up to the ball field and there'd be six or seven bikes. We'd all

ride our bikes. Yeah. Because you did, that's what kids did. And we would leave on a Saturday morning and ride all day long and just never come home until it got dark. And that was the rule. If the street lights were on, you were late. Yeah, that's right. You had to be at home at dark. That was it. They weren't worried about you in daylight, but they were worried to death about you at night. So yeah, it's totally different, man, and what you let your kids do. When you look back, and I hear you talking about motorcycles and baseball, how did you wind up? I mean, you grew up in a racing family. Your dad's Richard Petty, for God's sakes. And you grow up in a racing family. And it sounds to me like,

You had a lot of normal kid things that you did. So when did you start driving, actually? So this is the goofy part. And you know everything about these goofy. So I started, I started, so it started with my motorcycle. Okay. So when I was, I wrecked this thing all the time. I mean, come in with the handlebars like this, you know what I mean?

So Richie, bars that worked at the shop, he would heat up a rosebud and he'd pull him back around, you know. So after we had done this, 10 million times, he took the workbench and welded a piece of roll bar tubing. And I would come in with my bike and slide the handlebar. And then I would like the rosebud when I was eight or nine years old. And I would heat that thing up, pull it back around, off I'd go. So they didn't have to mess with me. So they taught me how to weld when I was 11 or 12 because we had these Chrysler kit cars. And they let me weld inside the car, weld the doorbars up because I could get in and crawl up under the dash and do all that. You know what I mean?

So you could do stuff like that. So I started hanging out the shop. I started going to my dad every summer, even though it was normal when the school year was going on because we didn't have motor coaches and we didn't travel to the races like that. My mom would throw us in the back of the station wagon and take us to the race.

Or we would travel with my dad. But I would go in the summer with them and travel with him. And so he made me, as I was coming along, the deal was 21. Can't drive till you're 21. Can't drive till you're 21. And I wanted to drive all the time. Can't even start until you're 21.

Nothing. Zero. And when I say zero, I mean, it's like they wouldn't let me set in the car at the at the shop, you know what I mean? Because they were afraid I was going to drive it or do something. So it was 21, 21, 21. I got out of high school and I'm like, come on, please, let's do it. And my mom wanted me to be a pharmacist. Okay, she wanted me to go to college and be a pharmacist.

And I know I look like a drug dealer, but it was never going to be a pharmacist, okay? I'm just not going to be a pharmacist. Right. So finally, he said, if you guys get that old Dodge running, we'll go to day. We'll go test. He'll say, we'll go test. So Steve Mill. And we got this Dodge running, man, we got it.

And he said, let's go to Daytona. We're going to Daytona. So we go to Daytona. And I have never driven a race car. Oh, my God. I've never, I've never driven around. a racetrack in my life and a race car ever. So he throws a car cover in the right side and it says, get in.

So I get in, he gets in, he straps on his helmet. We go out and he's willing this thing. He's like, there's a big bump right here and you need to go here and you need to run. Don't worry about getting up there yet. You'll get up there later. And he's explaining all this. He's just screaming at me when we're going around. Run 193 miles an hour.

It's sitting on the car cover. I'm on the car cover. I'm just hanging on. So we stopped. We pull back in the garage area and he takes off the helmet. He says, here, your turn. I went out and ran 152. Just killing it.

Getting after it. Just killing it, man. I was just doing it, dude. So I was 18 years old. And it took a day or two. We practiced for two or three days. And finally got up where I could run pretty decent and they would change stuff. And I would try to figure out what they were changing and doing stuff like that.

And we got faster and faster and finally went back and ran the Arka race. That would be 79. So that was the first time I ever raced at Daytona. I ran, my first year I ran Daytona, Atlanta, Michigan, Ontario, California. One other place. When the end of my first year of driving came along, I had run five races and nothing smaller than a mile in the high. That's unbelievable. That's crazy.

So what was the approval process back then? Because now it doesn't seem like there's much of an approval process anymore either. It didn't seem like there was much then. Here's the way it was. You want a license? Here, just run this car. That was it. Just run this card. No kidding. That was it, dude. Just run the card. We'll send you one. Listen, I could get a, so back then they had like different levels of license.

You could just go right. If you were willing to pay like $3.75, you could get the gold license, baby. That'll let you run. As long as you bought it, you were in. As long as you bought it, you were in. And the age, I would assume at that point, you had to be 18, right? I'm assuming. Yeah. I have no. I didn't really know. And I was Richard. Listen, I was Richard Petty.

Yeah. I don't think there was an age limit. Yeah, that's very true. I had that advantage. Still having that advantage is very questionable for the first five races that he picked. So as you go through those first five races, you progress. You've obviously won one cup races. You go from the ARCA. So you drive for the family?

Family. For how long? So here's what happened. So I ran one ARCA race and then my next race was Cup. I went straight to Cup. Okay. Talladega. The second race of my life was Talladega.

I run a cup race. Okay. Yeah, qualified 20th. I qualified, or qualified 19th, outqualified Bobby Allison. I thought I was. You thought you were the man. I was shit. Yeah.

Let me tell you. That's right. And the next time I saw them, they come by me in a line. And it couldn't have been mini laps. But God, I mean, Pearson and Bobby and Donnie and Baker and my dad and those guys. Yeah. There used to be a guy named Ray Melton, who was an announcer. And he used to say, High Wide and Handsome and the championship groove.

And that's exactly where they were, man. are flying. And I'll never forget, I got out of the car. That race was over the win. I got out of the car and I'm laying on the concrete because I'm just beat. Be 18 years old. Just think I know everything. And I'm laying and Pearson comes by.

And I got a rag over my head and Pearson kicks me in the ribs, you know, like that. You knew him? Yeah. Obviously, being around the race. Oh, yeah. Listen, so he kicks me in the ribs. And he's got a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. And he said, you're going to have to get a lot tougher if you're going to race with us.

I'm like some tough old men. Oh, yeah. They were. So I ran for a random family for the family at Petty Enterprises. And a few races in 79, 89, 80, 81, 82, 83. And then went to drive for the Wood Brothers. 84 I had them on. My dad left in 84.

So I stayed in 84, I guess. 85 I went to drive for the Wood Brothers. So I was there in 80 for the next four or five years. Yeah. And so you drive for the Wood Brothers and eventually you go and you wind up with Felix. I think the Felix piece for me, that has to be one of the most entertaining times. Oh, we had a great time. Everything that you did because he's just such a unique person.

And you're always in a great mood. Yeah, we just have a great time. Oh, having fun. Yeah. That was it. We had fun. Yeah. That was it.

And honestly, and here's how it all went. So Felix, and this will tell you, and you know this. So I drive for the Wood Brothers, and I told him when I went up there. I still, Eddie and Lynn and I are Leonard. Leonard is the smartest man in racing, bumper-to-bumper or not. There's never been a guy who worked on a cup car, or worked on a car that was as smart as Leonard would, in my opinion. And I went up there one day, and I'm looking around the shop.

I'm like, man. I'm the only one here that's not kin to these people. They're all kin to each other. They're woods. I mean, they all are cousins and first cousins. So I told Eddie, I said, listen, when y'all get ready to get rid of me, just let me know.

Just give me some runway. You know what I mean? Just give me a little bit. So June of, I guess, 88 or whatever, Eddie called. And he said, I think we're going to make a change. And I said, I'm good, man. We're good. You know what I mean?

We're good with it. So I didn't have anything. And I called Rick. and Rick said, let me think about it, and then Rick called me back. He said, hey, I'm selling a team to this guy, Felix Sabatis. Yeah. And he said, I need to set you up with it. Okay.

So I'm in Chicago making an appearance, and I get a phone call from Rick and get a message and, because for cell phones and stuff. And he said, I need you to come back to Charlotte and meet. So I fly from, I don't tell anyway. I just leave the appearance I'm at. I just get up and leave. catch a commercial flight to Charlotte. Get off, guys stand there with a card that says,

Petty, I wave. He puts me in the back of a car. He takes me around the airport to a hangar. We go in the hangar, pitch black. He takes me to an office, sets me down. He said somebody will be here in the next 30 or 40 minutes. And I'm like, oh, my God. What have I got myself into?

They're going to kill me. Yeah. Somebody isn't going to kill me. You know what I mean? And nobody knows where I am. Nobody on the face. the earth knows where I am right now. And I laugh about it now because as a driver, we would have all done that. You would have done that to have a shot at running a car for somebody. Yeah, you just go,

man. Somebody said, right, let's go. So he and Ted Conner walked in and they were partners. And he starts telling me all things he's going to do. And I'm like, you're going to go broke, dude. Yeah. You're going broke. This is not a good business. I can just tell you it's not a good business. No, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. So we, I drove for him for the next eight or nine years, best years of my life. And I won races, but that doesn't have anything to do with. It was just being with Felix and being around him and the places we went and the things we did and the things he taught me about life. And I say this, I come from love my dad to death, but we never told each other we loved us. We, you know, I, I,

I just grew up. My dad never told me. It's a different era. Yeah. Yeah. And you never hugged. You never did that. Felix never let his kids leave the house without telling them that he loved them. He never let his kids leave the house without hugging.

I mean, that was just, and I was like, oh, my God, that's where I want to be. As a dad, that's the way I want to be. So, I mean, he changed a lot of, I guess, perception of how I thought men should be or things should be. And incredibly smart, man. Just spent a couple weeks ago, spent four or five days with him. still loving the death, man. He's just, we're still friends. I would have never left Felix's because we just hadn't.

It was fun racing. Yeah. And I know you've done it. You've been places. Winning solves everything. It really does. Kind of. Yeah.

But there's still that. After you retire, then you think about it a different way and you're like, I won a lot, but what did I accomplish as a person? That's right. No, you do. You look, there's a different standard there. Very different. And, you know, but we just had fun.

And we cared about each other. And we got along good. And we got to a place where Adam came along. And you go through this with Keelan. It is when I started, I worked at the race shop. And I worked there from the time I was 12 or 13. My dad told me I had to work in every department for one solid year. You had to know how to do body work.

know how to grind heads and work in the engine room. You had to know how to fabricate. You had to know how to put gears together and transmissions. So that took me up to 18. So seven or eight years, I'd spent all those years working in the shot. You knew about the car. Yeah, knew about a car. Yeah.

So when Adam came along, it was like, I need to give him that. And he's not going to get that at Felix's. You know what I mean? And my dad, my granddad gave my dad a place to race. And my dad gave me a place to race. So I had to give Adam a place to race. So I left Felix in St. started my own deal. So that, Adam's stuff was all yours. All mine. Yeah. So I left, I left Felix

and started a team and I just called it PE2, I paid the Enterprise too. Just called it P.E.2. And I ran that for a year. And after we ran it for a year, Adam was in a place where he was ready to start running some, some bush cars at the time. And so I took all my stuff and went back to level cross and just combined my cup stuff with my dad's and kept the shop open at P.E.2 and run him out of PE2. So that kind of evolved into his. So what was Adam's path up through to getting in the car? Because I hear you talk about motorcycles. What was Adam's path? So we had a funny, his path was different. I guess he never raced anything. And that's the one thing. My dad had this philosophy and I've always, I guess I've kind of followed it. And Rick Hendrick and I have

talked about this a couple of times when he moved William Byron up so fast. You know, my dad said, always said, what kind of driver you want to be? I want to be a cup driver. Then let's go to cup. Because that's no need to waste your time anywhere else. We can afford it. We're going to hear, learn to run here. That's what you're going to do.

So when Adam started, we had a go card. He run some go cards. And it's like, yeah, let's get a Legends car. So you run a Legit. Yeah, at 14, we bought a late model. And we go to Carraway. before he could race. And funny story.

So we bought this late model and bought a little, rented a little building over close to where I live. Man, gung-ho. We're going to build a late model, man. We're going to put this thing together. Yeah. So he's over there. Every day after school, we're putting this thing together. And then he starts

not showing up as much, or he's got to go somewhere. He's got friends. And four or five months go by. And one day he says, hey, we're working on it. just a little bit, you know, a month or so, a little time goes behind. He says, how's that thing coming? And I'm like, it ain't coming. He said, what you mean?

It's not coming. I'm like, I'm not working on your stuff. Yeah. And ain't happening, dude. Yeah. If you want to work on it, I'll go over there and spend all night long working on it with you. But I'm not working on it by myself. So he jumped back on it.

And from that point on, I promise you, he never looked back or at anything else. It was just straight. Let me drive a race car. He needed that reality. check to know that you weren't just going to do it for him. Do it for him. And it was not a gift here. You got to go do it. So we go down to Caraway and this was a big spring car. Because that's what we were going to do. We were going to ride big spring cars. You know, once you get in the moot. So we'd go down to Caraway and I'd lock him in a trailer and change a spring and then say, okay, why'd I change?

Go run it and tell me what I changed. You know what I mean? Just to get him used to what a car felt like with a big right front or with a big right rear or not enough right front. You know what I'm doing? Just small bar, whatever it took, just to make the car change. And how can you adjust? Can you adjust as a driver or do we need to work on the car? You tell me what you want to do. So we spent, I can't even tell you the amount of time we spent down there. And the amount of tires we went through just run and run and run in laps before we ever started racing. And then when we started running the late model car, he would run, he would run care away every now and now. It was a little bit harder on equipment because it's small.

But you could go to Myrtle Beach and race and have a decent race. Learn to pass people. Learn to set them up. Learn to pass on the outside. Take care of your tires. Yeah, and take care. That's right. Same thing at Nashville.

Or he'd go over to Nashville and run with those guys at the fairgrounds over there. And then back and forth. And, you know, after he did that for about a year maybe, we went to ASA. And he ran the ASA car. Same time Jimmy was there, Johnson was there. We want to race out in Kansas. and we spent a year in ASA, and then it was time to go bush racing.

And he had run the Bush car some in 98, and then a full season in 99, and then we were ready to go and going to run 2000, then we were going to run the cup car. In 2001, Dodge was coming back. So we were going to spend a couple years there. So we never spent any time, a lot of time, any place. So how did Adam's career kind of tie the family?

It sounds like he tied the family back together. Yeah. Because it was full circle. You know, it's crazy. And I used to always joke when my dad, I used to say, you know, Adam's a son you never had. Yeah. You know what I mean?

And we'd laugh about it because he was so single-minded where I can't be a little scattered. Yeah. I like to do a little bit. That's okay. I like to do a little bit of everything. Yeah. You know, and, you know, and you said something a minute ago when you look back,

if I'd have been more focused, if I'd have been more single, I would have been a better race car driver. Right. Yeah. And I was a decent race car driver. I was a journeyman race car driver. I tell people that. I was here and I gave you somebody to pass.

That was my job. No, but you know what I'm saying. You were just, you did it. And I won some races and I sat on some polls and I had some good times. Hell, you drove my car. I know, man. Like that. I sat in that thing like this just because your butt's about this wide and my

butt's about that wide. For those that don't know, just to kind of set this up, I guess it would have been about 2005. Yeah. My arm fell asleep in the car one day at Bristol. And Kyle, I think you were out of the race. I was out. He was out of the race.

I would park mine, though, with a get in yours. Let me just go ahead and say that. He somehow got into my car. I mean, he's about a foot taller than me. And somehow you got into my car and ran the rest of the race. That's the only time I ever got out of the race car. Is it really? Only time ever.

No way. You know the whole story there. Because I was driving for Dodge. I was driving a Dodge. And you were driving a Chevy. And you were, you need to, you all were in the point thing. So all I need to do is keep it out of the wall. My job is not wreck.

When you get in somebody else's car, it's not to be a hero. It's just to finish the wreck. Well, let me, I just thought about this. Let me rephrase that. It's the only time I got out of the car. I got kicked out of the car. I got kicked out of the car and Kenny Wallace drove it. Yeah, we've all been that before.

Now you can continue with your story. So I drove, I drove, so that's what you did. I mean, we grew up doing that. My dad grew up doing that. Where people, somebody gets sick, somebody else would get in. Right. You know what I mean? Somebody else would get in. Somebody else would get in. Somebody was hurt. Somebody else would get in. So that's what drivers did. You just did it for each other. You might hate each other. But by God, you wanted to get in that car and do it. So the next week, I got a bill from Dodge, from Chrysler. We got fined, got docked $45,000, which was one race. So we had to pay them back $45,000 for driving it because I drove a Chevy. Because that was a Dodge driver. And I drove a Chevy. So we had to pay, God you back, $45 grand for driving.

Listen, I'd have paid $140,000 to drive your car. I'll say that. So I should have cut that deal with children. You should have definitely made children pay for that one. But I think it's interesting, you know, as I look back at and just listen to this conversation, I think it's really interesting to me because you went through a generation with your dad. Yep. You went through a generation as a driver.

You went through a generation with your son. and now you see the generation now. How has that camaraderie between the drivers changed from where we are today to what you grew up racing in? Because it's a lot different from when I drove compared to when I started to the end. So if you go back to, and listen, and I knew a lot of the guys that my granddad raced against,

you know, Junior Johnson and Buck Baker and all those guys. I just knew a bunch of guys that my guys. granddad raced against too. But my dad and those guys, and those generations were different. And I say this all the time. They had a tremendous amount of respect for each other. And they had a tremendous amount of respect for the equipment because they only had one car. Right. You know, only one car. I mean, you run the same car at Martin'sville, you run at Daytona. You just had one car. That's what you, you'd thrash that thing everywhere. but they never got close to each other.

They knew each other, but they didn't get close. And the reason they didn't get close is because death was still a huge part of the sport in the 60s. Listen, I remember being at Daytona and the way the score stand used to be. And there was a playground where my mom would score for my dad. That's the way the system was back in. And they'd put us in a cage up under the store. score board and we'd play. There's a merry-go-round and swing and some of that stuff.

And I remember playing with kids there and their mom would come get them. And you'd never see them again because their dad had been killed at Daytona. Friday Hassler is the perfect example of a gentleman that was killed there. Never saw his kids again. It was almost 40 years before I ever run into his kids again. Wow. And that's, so that's, you grew up in that kind of atmosphere. And even as I got older and started raising,

my uncle was killed on pit road at Daytona or at Talladega, excuse me, during a pit road accident. Yeah. So death was a big part of the sport. So the way you dealt with each other was, I know you, but I don't ever want to get close to you because it's always somebody else. You know what I mean?

You always have that mentality that it's, that's never going to happen to me. Yeah. Might happen to somebody, but it's not going to happen to me. So the drivers, the way they interacted with each other, was totally different. Then when we came along, when I came along, we still were at arm's length.

You know what I mean? You didn't see many people, you didn't see many people go out to dinner. You didn't see many people hanging out. You didn't see many people out in a bus lot. We didn't have a bus lot big. You know, it was just coming in. But you just didn't hang out with each other.

Now, at the racetrack, you'd set by your race cars and you'd bench race all day long. You know, we'd talk about chassis or talk about springs or talk about, you know, if you've been fishing or something like that, just little things. very superficial.

And, you know, it was still, you didn't, when you raced, you raced hard, but you didn't, it was a different type of racing hard. You know what I mean? I mean, because you knew you had to take that thing back to the shop and beat defenders out and go again the next week. You know what I mean? So where do you think that mentality switched from you got to bring it back to the shop to now, I don't give a shit if you bring it back to the shop, I want you to win.

What do you think that crossed over? I think it crossed, I think for owners it crossed when the money got so big. Yeah. When you have a team running 36 races and at one time had 30 cars, you know what I mean? I mean, we almost got to that. Yeah. You know, the specialized, it's a throwaway. Yeah.

And in all reality, cars are not cars. They're just a collection of pieces that come together on a Sunday to run because this we're in might be under this car later. You know what I mean? That's the way it was back then. And I think drivers got that way because how many times have, we see drivers now, and this is, this is Kyle, okay? We see drivers now that grow up on video games, that grow up just crashing something and walking away from it, and they don't have to show up on Monday morning at 6 o'clock and put it back together.

They got no skin in the game, you know what I mean? and they know when the race is over with, if I wreck you, I can text you or I can tweet you. Right. Or I can have my wife call you or somebody. You know, I mean, I say that all the time. You think that, and then, then I'm, Kevin, I'm so sorry that I got into you and I won the race. You know, I'm sorry.

You know, you think Kelly Arbor ever called up my dad and said, hey, sorry, I kicked your ass, bud. Sorry. You know what I mean? No, that's not, that's what it was about, man. Right. You get somebody a lap down. you keep them a lap down. The goal is to put everybody a lap down. That was, I mean, that was the point. It was, you know, kill or be eaten. That's the way it was. I'm sorry. So I think it changed a

little bit. And I think a lot of it changed too because, and you, some of these guys come in and they come in, they don't all come in the same door. You know, you look at Christopher Bell and you look at Larson and those guys now who have come through midgets and sprint cars and dirt and all that stuff. And then this guy came because his granddad on this or something happened here and he got here. Whoa. We're all on the same racetrack. Right.

You know, how did that happen? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's not a, there's a million doors to get here. And none of them are right and none of them are wrong. But whenever you get here, you bring that mentality. And if you bring that mentality that, you know, we've heard all the taglines right. Rubbin is racing and have it at boys and, you know, I'd wreck my mama and all this stuff.

Man, you hear that enough when you're 12 or 13. You believe it by the time you get in a car. That's right. And whether it's true or not, you believe that. And nobody talks, nobody starts telling these kids at 12 and 13, respect. Respect your equipment. Respect that other driver and respect his ability. You know what I mean?

Because if you race him that way, he's going to race you that way. Oh, yeah. I mean. And I used to have a basketball coach, and he gave me the best piece of advice is, remember, when something happens, nobody sees the first punch. They see the second punch. Right. You mean, you're the one that's going to get in trouble, you know, if you're throwing the second punch. But the point is, when that guy ruffs you up and you rough him up back, they see you do it. They don't see the other guy. You know, they may not see that the first time. So it's just a, and it has, in a strange way, I believe, it has snowballed to where that noise just gets louder every year.

People think it's okay to dive into the last corner and take somebody out. People think it's okay to make it six wide where it should be too wide. You know, people think it's okay. And they think the fans love it and they think it's okay, but it's not okay. You know what I mean? Fans may love it and that's okay. You know what I mean? I got that.

Right. I'm a firm believer that fans don't know what they like. Okay? I'm a firm believer in that. You know what I mean? They just like what they see on one given day. But it's a funny thing. And I'm going to use this as an example.

And this is a bad example, but I'm going to use it. There was a couple of guys that wrecked at Martinsville a couple years ago. It was really ugly. It was a very ugly wreck. Okay. So I'm not going to get into that. But it was a very ugly wreck. And I had a conversation with the,

them and with other fans. And my point was, if you were in car A, or if your son was in car A, and he did that to somebody else in car B, would you be proud of him? And almost every one of them said, no, I wouldn't. And I said, so if your son was in car B, and somebody in car A did that to him, would you be happy about it? And they're like, no. And I'm like, then how are you okay with this?

Yeah, and it just has this, it has this funny way of, writing itself after you get done with it. I mean, you look back at some of those things, and you're like, what in the world? What in the world? What in the world was I doing? You just got to, it's a strange thing. Yeah.

You know what I mean? And the pressure and the money and all the things that go with it have make you, they make you do crazy things. Crazy things. So I got two more questions. And I hear you talk about this every once in a while. What's the coolest thing that's been dug up on the petty property? Man.

And I mean dug out of the ground. Yeah. We got stuck. So, you know, when I was little, when I say little, five, six, seven years old, I told you I've never been in race cars. That's a little bit of a lie because we'd go around behind and we'd set my dad, my granddad's O's mobiles. Yeah. Still had big steering wheels taped and we'd pretend like we were racing old convertibles and stuff. I think some of the coolest stuff that's been dug up back there has been parts and pieces from those old mobiles and those old dodges. They had no idea how much they were going to be worth, did they? Now, it was called, so I do have to say this. It was junk then, and for us, it's still junk.

You know, for some people it's memorabilia and it's called goal. But it was junk, man. And because the thing was, and maybe we've talked about this before, where the sport was then in the way we grew up, and listen, it was that way through the 80s, is you got one uniform and one helmet. Right. That lasts you all year. Take care of it.

You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It wasn't a new helmet every week. It wasn't a new uniform. It wasn't a new set of gloves. It was one helmet and one uniform. And when that year was over with, you were so freaking happy to get rid of that and get that new one, man.

Get that new helmet, get that new one. You didn't care what happened to the old helmet. What happened to? And that's the same way you were with cars. Once that year was over with and once that car was totaled, you were on to a new car, man. It was always the next best thing. But you guys would bury him, right? We buried him.

Yeah. We buried him because the way the land sloped off behind the, the shop, we just pushed them back there. You just pull them back there. You'd strip all the good stuff off of them and just push them back there. And then we needed, every time we needed to add on a building or something, we just dumped dirt on top of it. So there's gold under there. Someday in 10 million years, they're going to dig up and they're going to think, they had a hell of a crash here at some point in time, right? The car's everywhere. Everywhere, man. So I imagine we've seen some pretty good stories on this last question. What was your first car that you drove on the road?

So, that's a good question. Because of a little bit of my first licensed car. Yeah, let's go to that. Yeah, let's go to the first license car. So when I was in, when I was in high school, so I mentioned a minute ago that my uncle, Randy, my mother's brother was killed in a pit road accident. He had a 69 charger.

Okay. So I ended up with this 69 charger, and it was god-awful green, just an ugly color green. And green leather interior, but it had a pistol grip, shifter, four-speed hearse. Oh, boy. Pistol grip, grab that thing. Also had, also had an eight-track player with an AM-FM radio and a CB attached. Okay? So I was jamming.

I was cool. So we took this thing, took it into the race shop there, and Richie and those guys worked on it, and we worked on it. And we split the rear fenders, split the front fenders, and lowered it where everybody else. So the thing in the south was jacked that thing up, man.

Get it, you know, do it like this. So we lowered it. We went the other way. I couldn't even drive it in and out of the race shop because we had a speed bump. I had to go around it. Yeah, because it would drag. So this thing, my Uncle Maury's,

he put a cam in it, put a set of heads on. on it. It had a 383 in it. So he put a set of heads on, put a cam in it. And it'd get, I promise you, it'd get four or five miles to the gallon. That's all this thing got. Gas was cheap. Yeah, it didn't get any. So they built the interstate, uh, 220 down to Ashborough. And on Fridays, when football team would play, we'd go to Ashborough to eat. So I had a kid in school had a brand new smoke in a band at Trans Am. This is back in the day.

Oh, yeah. Big Phoenix on the hood there. So we decided we're going to run the Ashborough in these cars. So we're going to race. My dad always told me, said, if you get caught racing, I'm going to take this car. You know, I'm going to take everything you've got if you get rid of. So we're out on the interstate there, and I'm thinking, we're going to be good. And so we take off from the Randleman exit headed down towards the Ashborough is five miles, six miles.

So we're humming along. and we got the windows down, and I got a kid with me, and he's got a kid with him, and we're screaming back and forth at each other, just w-blowing, building up, you know? So we get up, and we kind of level off. And I screamed over, and I said,

how fast are you running? He couldn't hear me, so a guy with me screams over, and he said, is that all you got? And he's like, that's pretty much all we got. And I think we were running about 120-something. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then I reached up and called Fourth Gear,

and then I took off. and this thing pegged 160. It had 160 on the speedometer, and it pegged. I think it used a half a tank of gas going to Ash for that day. But it pegged this thing. This thing was wicked, dude. This is the most wicked car.

I can't even describe to you how fast this thing would run. And it looked exactly like if you see a 69, if you see the Bobby Isaac car from 69, the old chargers and stuff that Baker and those guys don't, it looked just like a cup car, just had headlights and sell. the way we pulled the fenders out. Those were neat cars. We bought a 68 from Goodwill for $85, and we knocked all the water hoses and everything on it. We'd drive that thing to lunch every day

to see how long it would run. We couldn't make it stop running. It ran without water for as long as, until we got it high centered on a mound and just left it there. Oh, no way, man. They were pretty durable cars. But we could go and talk for days. I appreciate you taking the time. It's always fun to hear your stories and look forward to seeing you around the track. Thank you.