'The King' talks about reign over NASCAR

It all began a half century ago when a son, determined to follow in his father's footsteps, crawled into the cockpit of a stock car and decided to go racing.

And race he did, winning 200 events, capturing 127 poles and finishing in the top 10 more than 700 times.

For Richard Petty the statistics were kingly, and now when a race fan refers to "The King," no further explanation is needed.

"I ain't never been nothing else," Petty says with a shrug and a smile. "And what was fortunate from my standpoint, the times I came along, the personalities I was around, the people that helped me and stuff, it was a gradual deal. It wasn't a deal where you didn't do anything one year and you come out and win 10 or 12 races next year or a championship or something like that. It grew and I grew up with NASCAR and I grew up with the way -- the times have changed in the world, and I grew up in a time and place that time has changed in racing, and it just kept adding on day after day after day and it just built in to what it is now."

Petty is now 71 years old, but still sports the ever-present sunglasses and Charlie 1 Horse cowboy hat. Today he is a mostly behind-the-scenes owner of Petty Enterprises, but any time he appears in the garage area fans still gravitate toward him.

Even those who know him only from video clips and stories told by dads and granddads.

"Little kids will come up and say, 'Hey, Mr. The King,' so it makes you feel good that you've done something that they enjoyed," Petty said.

Although an icon in an American blue-collar sport, Petty's first Cup race actually took place in Canada on July 18, 1958 at the Canadian Exposition Stadium in Toronto.

"Yeah, we went to Canada and I was running around there getting lapped and my dad (Hall of Famer Lee Petty) knocked me in the wall, so I wound up in the wall and he ended up winning the race, so it wasn't all bad," Petty said. "But I got better."

That he did.

By the time he took his farewell ride at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1992, Petty had secured records that will never be sniffed in NASCAR competition. Aside from the 200 victories he grabbed the Daytona 500 checker flag seven times.

During the 1967 season Petty won a staggering 27 events, including 10 in a row.

But was there ever a time he knew he was becoming the greatest driver the sport had ever seen?

"I never sat there and said, 'Look what you've done or look what you've been able to accomplish,' because it was a deal that was just moving all the time," he said. "That one year we won ten races in a row, we won one, won two, done that before, won three or four, and by the time you won the fifth or sixth race, you wasn't trying to add any more, because as quick as that race was over, you're saying, 'Where are we going to run next and what do we need to do to win that race?' You didn't really get involved in it until it was all over with it and then you look back on it.

"I just think I was a lucky son of a gun to be born at the right place at the right time under the right circumstances with a little bit of talent and a lot of talented people around me to put me in a position to be where I'm at today."

Petty's final event was also the first Cup start for Jeff Gordon, meaning the Atlanta race symbolized a passing of the torch. And while his best years were behind him then, Petty was still able to start all 29 races on the schedule.

But he knew when it was time to walk away.

"If I'm going to run, I'm going to run with the big boys or I'm not going to run. I tell it like this, it would be the same way with you, if you were a fisherman, then you get all your stuff together and okay, I'm a race car driver, I get all my stuff together, I get all the team together; you get all the fishing gear together and the boat and you go tearing out on the water and you gear out and you cast, but you haven't got any bait on the end. That's the same way I am. I do everything that I've always done; I just don't get in a car. So anybody that's a fisherman or a hunter, you get ready to go hunting, you're ready to go but you haven't got any bullets or you get ready to go play golf, you're ready to swing but you have no golf ball to hit."

Fortunately for Petty there was nothing left to prove by the time he retired. And for as long as NASCAR exists, he will remain the standard bearer of excellence.

To hear him tell it, he was simply happy to be along for the ride.

"The first race I run at Columbia in 1958, I think there was one reporter there. After they got up, we had four or five reporters that went to all of the races, no TV cameras, no on-spot interviews or none of that stuff. So as racing grew, society grew, technology grew, and then it helped us grow.

"We helped it and it helped us."

(Contact Scott Adamson of the Anderson Independent-Mail in Anderson, S.C., at adamsons(at)independentmail.com.)