Kyle Petty

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Kyle Petty
Petty, Kyle (USAF) .JPG
status not active
NASCAR Cup Series statistics
Best placement 5. - (1992, 1993)
Starts Victories Poles Top 10
829 8th 8th 173
NASCAR Xfinity Series Statistics
Best placement 31.- (2000)
Starts Victories Poles Top 10
55 - - 11
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series statistics
Best placement 100th - (1997)
Starts Victories Poles Top 10
1 - - -

Kyle Eugene Petty (born June 2, 1960 in Randleman , North Carolina ) is a retired American NASCAR racing driver. He is the son of racing legend Richard Petty , grandson of Lee Petty and father of the late Adam Petty . He is currently working as an expert and commentator for NASCAR Sprint Cup races for the US television station TNT . He is the founder of the Victory Junction Gang Camp .

Career

Petty decided relatively quickly to follow in the great footsteps of his father Richard. He won his first major race in 1979 in the ARCA at Daytona International Speedway . He used a used Dodge Magnum that his father had used a year earlier. A little later he tried to get into the Winston Cup, now known as the Sprint Cup . Due to accidents in qualifying, however, he only managed to qualify for a race after a few attempts. The Talladega 500 at Talladega Superspeedway , which was then called Alabama International Motor Speedway , was his first Winston Cup race. He started 18th and finished ninth, a result that gave hope that his career could be as big as his father's.

Kyle Petty's 1989 season car

The great success did not materialize in the following years. By 1984 he brought his Petty Enterprises into the top five only four times. With the beginning of the 1985 season, he moved to the Wood Brothers . A year later he won his first race, the Miller High Life 400 . The following years with the Wood Brothers were the best of his career. The victory in Richmond was to be followed by seven more, three of them at the North Carolina Speedway from 1990 to 1992. He also took the first pole position of his career with the Wood Brothers. He started eight times first, the first time he succeeded in March 1990 in the Goodwrench 500 on the North Carolina Speedway.

In 1997 he returned to Petty Enterprises, albeit with his own car. That car was later fully incorporated into Petty Enterprises and Kyle became the racing team's chief executive officer .

In 1998 Kyle Petty's son Adam Petty began his NASCAR career. He's had some very good races, even one in the Winston Cup, and it looked like he could be at least as good as his father. However, Adam Petty tragically died in 2000 while training for the NASCAR Busch Grang National Series race at New Hampshire International Speedway . Thereupon Kyle Petty drove with the number of his son, the starting number 45, in the Cup series. In the following years, Kyle Petty and his wife Pattie tried to realize his son's vision and founded the Victory Junction Gang Camp , a facility for terminally ill children. On May 27, 2007, he was ranked third in the Coca-Cola 600 . It was his best NASCAR result since 1997 and his first top 5 result in car number 45, his son Adam's car.

Since 2007 he has been working as an expert and commentator on the Sprint Cup broadcasts on the US television channel TNT . In the summer of 2008 it was rumored that he could be replaced due to declining performance in the Sprint Cup. This was initially denied by Petty Enterprises, but Petty ended his career at the end of the season.

Teams and sponsors

Teams

Sponsors

Others

  • Unlike many other drivers, he does not have his name above the side window, but the name of his son Adam, as the # 45 was his car.
  • He always drives a mostly black car on New Hampshire Motor Speedway , the place where his son died.
  • In 1995 the band Soundgarden released a song about Kyle Petty called Kyle Petty, Son Of Richard .
  • Kyle Petty was only the second driver to become the main character in a video game. The game is Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing for Super Nintendo .
  • His cousin Ritchie Petty was also active in the Winston Cup.
  • In the 1996 Brickyard 400 , Kyle Petty had a serious accident on lap 39. He had to be taken out of the car by rescue workers. When the rescue workers tried to put him on the stretcher, he complained of great pain, which confused the rescue workers. Reason for the pain: One of the helpers stood with one foot on Petty's ponytail.
  • Kyle Petty was involved in the production of the NASCAR program Tradin 'Paint , which runs every race weekend on the US SPEED Channel .

Web links

Commons : Kyle Petty  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Petty, Kyle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Petty, Kyle Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American NASCAR racing driver
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Randleman , North Carolina