MM: Did Rick Hendrick’s gamble on Jeff Gordon open other owners’ eyes to other capable drivers outside the South?
RP: It probably did, but if you look at Jeff’s record – he came through other racing series – but then he came to run with Bill Davis in the Busch series and did well. He sat on poles, he ran well. So it wasn’t that much of a gamble for Hendrick to go in that direction [signing Gordon].
It was a gamble, don’t get me wrong. Any time you get a driver – we’ve taken Bobby [Labonte] and it’s a gamble, and you ask: Does he fit into our organization? Can he drive our equipment? Does he get along with our people? Is he really gung ho? Jeff was young
enough, and was pushed in there, and he had the ability to do it.
ADVERTISEMENT
Take Earnhardt [Sr.] It took Earnhardt a long time, not to knock him, it took him a long time because we had a closed society. He didn’t get a chance at a first class car. He had to work his way up – every ride he got was a little bit better, and a little bit better – until he got with Bud Moore and he did pretty good. Then he got back with Childress and the chemistry came together. With his ability and his knowledge over time, and Childress had a good organization, and they just clicked.
Take Tony Stewart. He ran Busch and crashed every cotton pickin’ race; didn’t ever finish, didn’t do nothin’. Got him in a Cup car and he was Jack the Bear, man! So, it’s a gamble with any driver.
MM: Will there ever be another Petty in a Petty car?
RP: (Ponders for a while.) Hmmmm. I won’t say never, but they’re not any coming along. The only Petty we have now is Austin. That was where Adam was so much of a centerpiece to the Petty organization.
He started in karts, then Legends cars – all on his own. For one Christmas he wanted to run local Saturday night races. So Kyle bought him all the pieces, put them in the middle of the floor, and said, ‘if you want to go race, you put it together.’
So he jumped in there and worked on it for a while, then he quit. Then he got back in the mood and got a bunch of his buddies and they’d go down to Carraway [Speedway, NC] and run some other local tracks. We let him learn what it was all about on his own. He couldn’t spend a bunch of money and hire a bunch of good people.
Then, after he had a little more experience. Kyle talked to the ASA, and got him a good ride in ASA, and he did pretty decent. We didn’t want to leave him there too long because if he started winning races regularly he’d become a big fish in a little pond. If you leave anybody anywhere too long, they get so used to that – they can’t learn a new way.
We put him in a Busch car [full time in 1999] and he did pretty good; he was getting better in it. He ran that one Cup race at Texas, and blew an engine and he was running good. We had our plans: he needed an identity, so when we were going back to Dodge, we could run him with them and he’d have an identity [with that brand].
I’ve always had an identity with Chrysler, Plymouth or Dodge. Even though I drove Pontiacs [and GM] for a bunch of years. Anybody says, ‘Richard Petty’ they think of Chrysler, or Plymouth, or Dodge, one.
But the good Lord didn’t mean for it to be that way. That really put us at a low ebb. Took us a long time to recover. So we just had to go to another blueprint because that one was off the table.
