INSIDE MOTOR SPORTS
The King's New Prince
Petty may give Andretti
a ride
by Ed Hinton
Posted: Wed November 12, 1997
Two of racing's household names—Petty and Andretti—are about
to join forces. Soon after the NASCAR finale at Atlanta, Richard
Petty is expected to sign John Andretti as driver of the
legendary number 43 for 1998. That should solve the biggest
headache the King has had since he retired from driving five
years ago to focus on being a team owner: his drivers' identity
crises.
"When you drive for me," says Petty, "no matter what you do,
you're always going to be in my shadow." Although Petty won't
acknowledge publicly that a deal has been struck with John
Andretti, the nephew of Mario and cousin of Michael, he concedes
that "John would have a better chance of overcoming the identity
problem than Bobby Hamilton." Hamilton has driven for Petty for
three years, but after he won the AC-Delco 400 at Rockingham,
N.C., last month, Petty still got as much publicity as he did.
"When we won our first race at Phoenix in 1996," says Hamilton,
"I didn't see a single headline with my name in it. They all
said THE KING RETURNS TO VICTORY LANE." Hamilton denies that
Petty's long shadow is the reason he's leaving to replace
Sterling Marlin on the Morgan-McClure team, but it couldn't have
helped their relationship.
Andretti, who drives for Cale Yarborough, got his first Winston
Cup victory in 110 career starts when he won the Pepsi 400 at
Daytona in July. However, Yarborough's failure to land a new
sponsor to replace RCA, which has announced it is getting out of
racing after this season, leaves Andretti free to drive for
Petty, who used him in 11 races in 1994 and liked what he saw.
Andretti, 34, would become a Pontiac teammate of Petty's son
Kyle, 37. Petty Enterprises may eventually expand to three
drivers, with the addition of Kyle's son Adam, 17, who is racing
late model stock cars. Adam would be the fourth-generation Petty
in a NASCAR dynasty that was started by his great-grandfather
Lee. But the family doesn't want to make the same mistake with
Adam that it made with Kyle, who at 19 ran a single ARCA race,
won it, then jumped to the Winston Cup in 1979. "That was a
failed experiment from the beginning," says Kyle, who needed
seven years to win his first Winston Cup race. "I couldn't bring
a 17-year-old with no experience into this series." They'll
likely have Adam serve an apprenticeship on the Busch Grand
National Series circuit first.
Issue date: November 17, 1997
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