Richard Petty, The Legend.

The legendary Richard Petty had more than 200 victories when he started to race more and more, gaining the great nickname of “The King.” He became a NASCAR driver. When he got retired from his racing career he decided to become a television broadcaster for all the stock-car racing, but he didn’t have success at all. After some time he became an operating owner, and his son Kyle Petty replaced him 10 years later.

A brief history of Richard Petty

Richard Petty is also well-known as Richard Lee Petty, he was born on February 18, 1937 in North Carolina, United States. This great man comes from a racing family, his father was another legendary racer, Lee Petty, and he was three time winner of the Grand National Cup. The Petty family is legendary for more than 100 years, and they live in North Carolina since 1700’s, and they didn’t have electricity until the end of the World War II. He traveled a lot with his mother and his brother Maurice following his dad racings and career in general. When the two boys, Maurice and Richard became men, Maurice decided to work on engines and Richard decided to follow his father career. He won his first race called Charlotte Speedway in 1960, and since then and the record he made in Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1992, his record can’t be compared with any other.

Petty joined NASCAR as a great driver in 1958, and in 1959 he was between the top 10 finishes of the Rookie of the Year. In 1964 he won his first Daytona 500 and he won his very first Grand National Cup. One year later NASCAR had new rules and Petty got disappointed and decided to go away for a while. Two years later he decided to go back to NASCAR and he had a record 27 and the first place finishing the race, and it became the second Grand National Cup he won.

He was well-known for driving his red and blue number 43 car with a logo STP, in the 70’s he continued winning a lot of Cups titles in the following years: 1971 – 1975 and 1979. He was the most intelligent and well skilled driver in his time and he was very expert in mechanical matter of all the Petty team. He was very special from the beginning, seems like his destiny was to be the champion of the car races around the world. His brother Maurice and his cousin Dale were the ones who built all his cars and their engines. We can say that the legendary Richard Petty was on the most amazing team because time after time they liked to innovate introducing all kind of new trends in the decoration and creation of new tools for cars, such as nylon window screens, roll bars, etc. It was a great time of success for the Petty family, they were well-known anywhere, and Richard Petty was praised for his great performance.

In 1992 Richard Petty retired, he had in his record more than 1,180 NASCAR events, been the winner of 200 of them. He won seven times in the Daytona 500, his name is in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1997. His son Kyle followed his career and so did his grandson Adam, they raced in the NASCAR competitions as well.

His life after retirement

Richard Petty and his son are the host of “Lifting it right,” it is a training in DVD distributed by Automotive Lift Institute. In 1995 Richard wanted to broadcast on television in CBS as a commentator, but it failed and didn’t last enough. He have has one single style, he always use his trademark sunglasses and a Charlie One Horse cowboy hat, that mostly has a plume of rooster feathers at the front.

Petty appeared in movies and other TV shows, such as the show Modern HotrodZ, he appeared in the movie “Swing vote,” driving his famous blue and red car number 43, he voiced Strip Weathers, for the movie “Cars” in 2006 for the company Pixar/Disney. This movie used the same color and number as he used to use when he was a legendary racer.