Fair-haired Boy Of The Stockers

Hey! Young Pete Hamilton, the rosy-cheeked son of a Harvard Ph.D. and a Tufts B.A., tools down the back chute at the Daytona International Speedway during the early hours of a limpid spring day to begin a test of his Richard Petty-blue, high-winged Plymouth Super Bird. It takes forever to get from Turn Two to Turn Three, and there's not much to do except to talk to yourself or sing or look at the birds. But young Pete Hamilton, his arms stiff on the padded steering wheel in front of him, the grainy pebbles of sound penetrating harshly to his brain, is doing none of these. He is laughing. Hey! It's 9 o'clock on a Wednesday morning and you know what I'm thinking? That at that moment I'm the only guy in the world driving a race car at 200 mph—and I probably was. He reaches the entrance to the third turn, high against the outside retaining wall. Still smiling, he turns the wheel to the left and eases off the throttle ever so slightly as the car dives deep to the inside groove. Then he gets back on the gas and the car drifts lonely back up the high bank and prepares for the long run down the main straight.

Pete Hamilton is a Lord Jim of the Southern speedways, a sweet zephyr blowing across the cold, hard face of a sport business so steeped to cynicism it is beyond tears. On one hand are the promoters who see only the dollar signs; on the other are the automobile and tire manufacturers and the accessory companies who would pull out of racing in a minute if they didn't think it sold their products. In between are the drivers—the mercenaries, the hired guns, the soldiers of fortune—and as one top driver said recently, "You get so cold-blooded after awhile you just don't care."

Pete Hamilton has not yet been caught up in any of this. There hasn't been time. He is just 27, this is only his second full season of NASCAR Grand National racing, he is driving for Richard Petty, a man he has worshipped all of his racing life, and he has already won two major races this year—the Daytona 500 and the Alabama 500. He has also won more than $85,000 and has appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. For the last four years, he has been living a dream and this is how it happened:

1967—Hamilton, born and raised in Newton, Mass., had been knocking around racing's minor leagues for six years, mostly in New England. His career had been interrupted by losing bouts with hepatitis, the Army Reserve and the University of Maine, and he decided the only way to make a name would be to win the NASCAR sportsman-car championship. Which he did.

At the NASCAR awards banquet for that season Hamilton, a gangly stringbean of a kid with a butch haircut who walked like a grasshopper in heat, received his trophy and mumbled the usual thank yous. He then turned to Petty, who was on the podium for the second time as the Grand National point champion. "One of these days I'm going to be sitting where you are," he said. The crowd laughed and applauded his brashness. Petty smiled.

1968—The next logical step up was to the Grand National division of NASCAR. Hamilton moved to Charlotte, N.C., the geographical center of NASCAR country, drove the first part of the season in a Ford and finished the year in a Dodge. He started 16 races. Although he did not win any, he led several and finished in the top-five three times and the top-10 six times. He was named rookie of the year.

1969—Hamilton was faced with a critical choice. His Grand National ride had dissipated and he had two options—either to bounce around the circuit and take whatever rides might come along or drop down a notch to NASCAR's Grand Touring division, where he was assured a superb ride in a Camaro sponsored by Gene White, an Atlanta tire dealer. Hamilton chose the latter. He started 26 races, finished 14 of them and won 12.

But the end of the year found Hamilton in a depression. Both of his parents were bedridden in a hospital and he learned White could not campaign the Camaro the following year. Then some good news. Word leaked out that Petty, who in 1969 had defected from the Plymouth camp in favor of Ford, was returning to Plymouth and would campaign two cars during 1970.

1970—Well, Petty is a god in the South, no less to the drivers against whom he runs than to his thousands of fans, and Hamilton, like a friendly puppy dog, had followed Petty around the Grand National circuit for the past two years trying to learn at the feet of the master. Early in the year, on one pretext or another, Hamilton called Petty in Level Cross, N.C., and on Jan. 6 Richard invited him over. Level Cross (pop. 100, mostly Pettys) is located just north of Randleman and just west of Climax. After an afternoon's conversation Petty took on Hamilton with a handshake. The next day Pete went to work.

On Feb. 22 Hamilton hunched himself, all arms and elbows, over the steering wheel of his SuperBird, and out-gutted Ford veteran David Pearson to the finish line in the Daytona 500 (SI, March 2), perhaps the most prestigious of Grand National races, and became an instant hero. In April he coasted home one lap in front of the field in the Alabama 500 at the new Talladega speed-way. Last Sunday, at the Michigan International Speedway, he started on the pole in the Motor State 400 and had a rousing wheel-to-wheel battle with the veteran Cale Yarborough, ultimately losing to Cale by a mere two-tenths of a second. (Pete protested later that the scorers had given Cale a lap too many; i.e., that he had won.)