Kyle Petty - An Unhappy / Mad Guy
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Hardin: Kyle Petty has seen enough of Daytona
Sunday, February 15 ( updated 8:20 am)
By Ed Hardin
Staff Columnist
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Kyle Petty went home Saturday, and he won't be watching the race today.
Richard Petty will watch from the pit stalls, but he might as well be home.
They'll run the 51st Daytona 500 today with no Petty in the field, the first time that's happened since the 1965 Plymouth boycott. It's over. The long history of the Pettys and Daytona will end today with the King reduced to a cardboard cutout of himself and Kyle home in North Carolina seething.
"It's (ridiculous)," he snapped Saturday when asked what it would be like watching the sport go on without him and the family business he dedicated his entire life to. "That's what it's like. That's just honesty."
Insulted by the way it ended and devastated by the insensitivity, Kyle made a couple of appearances at the track Saturday then put Daytona in his rear-view mirror. He'd come here to fulfill some promises to himself and others, publicize a charity golf tournament, compete in the 24-hour event. What he saw when he got here will stay with him a long time.
In a final ignominy at the end of a long and devastating ordeal, he saw someone else in his car. Not just any car, but the No. 44 blue and white replica of the Dodge he drove here 30 years ago to win the ARCA event in his first race.
Kyle didn't get mad. He'd been mad for a long time, mad at how his family business moved from Level Cross to a shop in Mooresville, mad at how it was sold as an investment to someone he'd never met in his life, mad at how it was finally liquidated and sold again to still another investor who owned Gillett-Evernham (GEM) and falsely labeled Richard Petty Motorsports.
And then he saw the car.
"I get mad all the time," he said. "I was not mad about that at all. I was crushed. I was hurt. And I'm not going to get over it for a while."
Read what you will into it, but Kyle has washed his hands of some things he'd wanted to wash his hands of for a long time. He'd been in this business since the day he was born, literally raised in a sport that operated out of a race shop his grandfather built off Branson Mill Road in Level Cross, raised as the son of Richard Petty, a burden none of us will ever understand, raised to chase someone else's dream of himself, ultimately left on his own to figure out what that meant.
It meant not chasing his own dreams of being a musician or his mom's dreams of his becoming a pharmacist. He would raise a son to inherit those dreams, then watch as young Adam was taken away before his time. Kyle wore a No. 45 hat Saturday with a black bar sewn over the numeral.
"The 45 with the mark in it is my tribute, my way of acknowledging that Adam drove the 45 car, not Kyle Petty," he said.
Kyle drove with Adam's name on the car for eight years, carrying the family business the only way he knew how, assuming the business would go on after him. He watched helplessly as it was broken up, sold and eventually allowed to morph into something called Richard Petty Motorsports that has nothing to do with Petty Enterprises.
"I don't like the way it was handled; I don't like anything about it," he said.
The business is gone now. Its history wasn't passed to the new team. The famous 43 car is red, and there's no such thing as Petty Red.
"There is no Petty Enterprises," Kyle said. "Let's be real honest, there's Richard Petty Motorsports or whatever ya'll want to call it. But there is no Petty Enterprises. Petty Enterprises ceased to exist when it left Level Cross, N.C."
He came here this week to race in the 24 Hours of Daytona and do some public relations work for the Victory Junction Gang Camp and then maybe catch some of the race today and head home.
In 1979, after finally convincing his father he was ready to race at age 18, he was given a Dodge Magnum his dad no longer wanted, painted it blue and white in a simple scheme with a Valvoline decal on the hood and the No. 44 on the sides. Kyle then went out and won the ARCA 200, adding his own story to the Petty lore.
The new team didn't bring out a Petty blue No. 43 this week, didn't dare bring out a 42 scheme like that of Poppa Lee's, didn't dare touch the sacred 45. They went with Kyle's 44 throwback scheme. And that didn't sit well with the son of Richard Petty.
"That was my paint job and my car and my number and my stuff," he said, not hiding his emotion. "From MY first win. Not for Petty Enterprises or GEM or whoever that is. They can look at it how they want to, but I didn't get a call. From anybody. So that's even worse."
They didn't ask him about it. Didn't even tell him about it. They'll run the Daytona 500 today with no Petty in the field, with Richard in the pits watching a red No. 43 and a blue No. 44. Kyle Petty will be home, not watching.
