A living legend in the world of racing if ever there was one, Richard Petty has won an incredible 200 races in his career, holding one of his many records as a seven time winner of the Daytona 500. Other than Dale Earnhardt, he is the only racer to ever win the NASCAR Championship seven times, a record he is justifiably proud of.
Over 35 years in the sport, Richard Petty competed in no less than 1184 NASCAR Sprint Cup races. Not only does he have 200 wins to his record, but also has had 712 top ten finishes. He is considered one of NASCAR’s all time greats and perhaps even the greatest, having had 513 consecutive starts between the years 1971 and 1989.
Petty comes from a racing family; his father Lee was the winner of 1959’s Daytona 500 (the first year that the event was held) and himself a NASCAR Championship winner three times over. His son Kyle is of course well known to NASCAR fans – and tragically, Petty lost his grandson Adam in a New Hampshire Interational Speedway accident only a little over a month after his father passed away.
The Petty family owns and operates Petty Enterprises, his family’s racing team. Based out of an enormous 100,000+ square foot former Yates Racing facility, he is still active in the organization and is as always popular with the fans and is to this day commonly asked to sign autographs.
He got his start in racing at the age of 21 and was 1959’s NASCAR Rookie of the Year with a record of 9 top 10 finishes (6 of these were top 5 finishes!). He continued to be one of the sport’s top racers right up to his 1992 retirement; his last top 10 finish was in the 1991 Budweiser at the Glen race.
Richard Petty is remembered for three of the many crashes he survived. In 1970, at the Rebel 400, he was injured when his Plymouth Road Runner cut a tire and slammed into a wall, flipped several times, injured his shoulder and bounced his head off the pavement several times. This accident caused NASCAR to require the safety netting over the driver’s window.
Petty somehow managed to keep a broken neck a secret from the world, even competing in a few more races after being injured in a race at Pocono in 1980. His other incredible crash came in 1988 in the Daytona 500, when he was in a crash which sent pieces of his car flying – Petty himself though was able to walk away unhurt save for some temporary visual impairment.
He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1997 and a year later, NASCAR named him one of its 50 all time greatest drivers. This award was followed up with a Medal of Freddom in 1992; the highest honor accorded to civilians in the US.
Always known as a fan favorite, Petty would take hours after races to sign autographs for fans and acted as an effective ambassador for NASCAR racing. He has appeared in several films (as himself), including Stroker Ace, Speed Zone and Swing Vote.
With a racing heritage handed down from his father that won the first Daytona 500, and passed down to his racing son, Kyle, Richard Petty’s life has revolved around the racing world and continues to this day.
