Fine-tuned

Petty understands future rests on his shoulders

You know those TV commercials that idealize motor-home vacationing? The ones where father and daughter gaze up at the constellations together, and friends lounge contentedly around a campfire?

Well, Kyle Petty would be a great addition to the campfire commune. I don't know how he reacts when he sees those ads, but in the garage, he seems to grasp the absurd. Doesn't hem, haw or require prompting.

At Dover last week, someone asked if he'd looked at the Winston Cup race winner's trophy, because it apparently resembled the one Kyle received the last time he'd won at Delaware, in 1995 -- actually, the last time he won, period.

"I don't look at trophies," he replied. "If I want to go look at trophies, I go to the King's house."

It was self-deprecating humor, accompanied by a grin. Kyle Petty has eight Cup victory trophies compared to his father Richard's 200, but the future of Petty Enterprises resides with Kyle, not the King.

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Last year, all three Petty teams were so bad they could -- and probably did -- spawn comic standup material. John Andretti finished 31st in the No. 43, Buckshot Jones finished 41st in the No. 44 and Kyle finished 43rd in the No. 45. A gradual decline had decimated one of NASCAR's most hallowed organizations, and as part of the regeneration effort early last season, Richard ceded day-to-day company responsibilities to Kyle.

Out went the in-house engine program. In came master builder Mike Ege, formerly of Robert Yates Racing Engines. Gone were specialized parts and chassis. Everyone now picks from the same pool of identical resources. Robin Pemberton, Rusty Wallace's longtime crew chief and an old friend of Kyle's, was hired as overall manager for the three teams and to ease Kyle's workload, and the King helps out wherever needed.

So far, there's been only one driver change. Jones was replaced by Steve Grissom in mid-April.

"We were good at running 35th-43rd last year," Kyle said. "At the end of the year we got pretty good at running 25th-35th. Our goal was to start this year running somewhere between 15th and 25th. We didn't have any unrealistic expectations. We didn't think we were going to go out and run in the top five. We wanted to run somewhere between 15th and 25th."

Things are a little more positive in this second season with Dodge. Kyle currently sits 20th in the Cup standings. Andretti is 32nd, and Grissom is 43th. Kyle says he won't be fully satisfied until the other teams catch up to his, but he knows better than to be greedy.

"The biggest sign that we've started to turn the corner is all our teams are finishing somewhere between 25th and 15th," he said. "You go somewhere and Steve Grissom ran eighth at Richmond. You get excited about that, but you just exceeded your goals that day. You've got to stay focused on your goals. Your goals are 15th-25th. You can't be disappointed if you run 16th. You're right where you need to be to build on it."

Away from the track, progress is being made on the Petty family's pet charity, the Victory Junction Gang Camp for seriously ill children. Initial construction should begin in late summer, according to Kyle, and this year, all the charity proceeds from his annual cross-country motorcycle ride will go to the camp.

The ride starts in three weeks, on the Sunday the Cup series competes at Sears Point. Its route ventures farther north than in years past, from Sonoma, Calif., to Jackpot, Nev., to Jackson Hole, Wyo., to Cheyenne, to Omaha, Neb., to Chicago to Cleveland to Hot Springs, Va., to North Carolina.

"The first year we pulled in a gas station and the lady cut off the pumps and locked the doors and wouldn't give us gas," Kyle said. "She was afraid of us, and there wasn't but 35 of us then. There's like 150 or 160 of us now, so it'll be a lot different.

Although life at the track continues to be different, and sometimes difficult, it can't match Kyle's personal trials. Two years removed from the death of his oldest son, Adam, in a Busch practice crash at New Hampshire, he's doing better nowadays, he says.

Somewhat.

Last week's visit to Dover was another of those periodic, emotional hiccups he's come to expect; it was the first track he returned to following Adam's death in May 2000.

"It's been two years and it's still hard to come back, for some reason, to this place," Kyle said. "And I don't know why. At some race tracks, I breeze through the gate and it's not hard. I think about it, but it's not hard. At some race tracks I go to, I'm just devastated when I get there. But I think the further away I get from [it] time-wise, I think time does help."

How is the man even walking around, you say? Because he discovered that he must.

He and wife Pattie are parents to another son, Austin, and a daughter, Montgomery Lee. Their deepest psychological wounds may never close, but Kyle says protective scar tissue has deepened, and the build-up of weeks, months and now years has had an anesthetic effect.

"I don't think it heals everything," he says of time. "But I think it softens the blow. And I think time in this case, each year, has helped to soften a little bit of it."

He's also accepted reality: Adam's not coming back, and Adam's dad can't just plop in one of the white porch rockers at the Petty homeplace in North Carolina, and wither away his days.

"I'm not the first person to lose a son or a daughter or a child or a loved one," Kyle said. "And I think it's easier in a group a lot of times. You're at that stage where it's easier in a group. At night time, when there's nobody around and it's dark and everything, that's when it gets the worst. But in a group you're a lot better."

Garage folks say he appears at bit more at peace, his wit and smile brighter. Certainly, he's immersed himself in his mission to rebuild the family business, and he still loves the sport, offering opinions that bright, sunny morning last weekend on everything from NASCAR's brat-pack drivers to the state of racing courtesy.

But while the success of Petty Enterprises' youngest team, the No. 45, appears limited compared to some others' bottle-rocket ascents this season, that 20th place in the Cup standings is far more tonic to the man behind the wheel than it is to his business plan.

Especially since he left his signature No. 44 to keep the No. 45 alive.

"And now that it's having success, I'm a little bit more comfortable to think, 'OK, if Adam was here, he would be having success in this car,'" Kyle said. "We're not anywhere we want to be, by any stretch of the imagination. But to be able to move forward and say, 'OK, this is where Adam would be right now,' gives you some comfort, I think."

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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