HE’S STILL KING : Richard Petty, Who Started in First Daytona Speedway Race 30 Years Ago, Will Seek 8th Victory From 34th Starting Spot

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Daytona 500, the showcase event of stock-car racing, at the house that Bill France built--the Daytona International Speedway.

Richard Petty was in that first race in 1959, when NASCAR left the old beach course to run on a 2 1/2-mile, high-banked super speedway tri-oval. He didn’t do too well as the engine in his Olds convertible exploded after only eight laps.

King Richard, as he has become known while winning the Daytona 500 seven times, the Winston Cup championship seven times and being named stock-car racing’s most popular driver nine times, is in today’s race, too. He will be starting in 34th position after his Pontiac failed to finish its 125-mile qualifying race on Thursday.

Ken Schrader, who is better known in United States Auto Club racing as a national dirt-car and sprint-car champion, will lead today’s race from the pole after he qualified at 193.823 m.p.h. in a Chevrolet.

Lee Petty, Richard’s daddy, won the first Daytona 500 although he didn’t know it for three days. Johnny Beauchamp was first declared the winner, but France called for a photo finish.

Things were more primitive 30 years ago. A “photo finish” meant asking spectators and news cameramen to send in photos they took of the finish so that France and a committee could examine them. Precisely 61 hours after Petty and Beauchamp had crossed the finish line, France announced that Petty’s Oldsmobile had been inches ahead of Beauchamp’s Thunderbird.

Lee will be here today, too, but only to watch. Lee, patriarch of the Pettys, spends most of his time these days playing golf and spinning yarns about the Good Ol’ Days.

“I wasn’t all that keen about racing at Daytona because most of us had done all our racing on short tracks and didn’t know what to expect,” the eldest Petty said about the first race. “It was quite a shock to us when Cotton Owens won the pole with a lap better than 143 (m.p.h.). Nobody’d ever run anywhere near that fast anywhere before, but as the race went on, the feeling of being able to pass other cars so unexpectedly was something that kept me interested.”

Kyle Petty, son of Richard and grandson of Lee, will be in today’s race with his daddy. Kyle, 27, the first third-generation driver to win a Winston Cup race, will start his eighth Daytona 500 in 21st position. He is still looking for his first win in this race, however.

Glen Wood, one of the starters in 1959, is one of the owners of the Ford that Kyle Petty will drive today.

At 50, King Richard is still the most recognizable figure in racing. He is still as lean and tall, 6 feet 2 inches and 175 pounds, as he was at 20, and, except when he is in his race car, he is never without his black cowboy hat and dark wraparound sun glasses, smoking a Cuban panatela.

“It’s still Daytona, and they’s still race cars, but that’s about all that’s the same from back then to these days,” Petty reminisced as he stood in the garage watching his crew straighten out the dents from Thursday’s accident. “It’s like any other business--there’s changes in everything over 30 years. There’s more of everything--money, cars, equipment, tracks, sponsors, fans. Every place you look, it’s different. It’s just snowballed.”

Richard was a rookie when he came to Florida with his daddy from the Petty home in Level Cross, N.C., for that first Daytona 500.

“Nobody had any idea what to expect,” he said. “They had two 100-mile qualifying races, one for convertibles and one for hardtops. I was in the convertible race and finished fourth. I thought that was pretty good.

“There was a big difference in speed between the two classes. We weren’t running but about 130 in the convertibles and the hardtops were up around 140. When I got in the 500, I was feeling frisky and got my Olds hooked up with the hardtops in a draft.

“First thing I knowed, I was going 140. I was just hanging on. Those hardtops were pulling me with them, but it blowed the dickens out of my engine. It wasn’t ready for but 130. I didn’t know any difference ‘cause it was the first time we’d been in a situation like that.

“It wasn’t only the end of me in that race, it was the end of the convertibles, too.”

Petty has missed only two 500s in the intervening 30 years, in 1961 and 1965. In 1961, his car became airborne during the qualifying race and sailed over the wall and crashed in a parking lot. The car was demolished, and Petty had a seriously broken ankle and injuries around his eyes that kept him out of the race.

Two hours later, Lee had a carbon-copy incident in which he and Beauchamp--the same driver he had narrowly beaten in 1959--flew over the wall together in an accident that virtually ended the elder Petty’s racing career.

It was another airborne circumstance that knocked Richard out of Thursday’s qualifying race.

“I was in the draft and set out to pass the cat in front of me when the rear end just lifted and when it landed, the car was pointing off to the side,” he explained. “When it hit back down, there wasn’t anything I could do. I was just lucky I didn’t hit anything before I got in the grass.”

Richard won the first of his seven 500s in 1964, after starting from the front row. In 1965, however, he did not come back to defend his laurels because he was a Plymouth contract driver and Chrysler was boycotting NASCAR after it had banned the hemi engine. When the Daytona 500 was being run, Richard was off drag racing.

The next year, he and his Plymouth returned and dominated Speed Weeks. Richard won the only Daytona 500 pole of his career with a record lap of 175.165 m.p.h., finished second in his 100-mile qualifying race and won the 500.

He would win again in 1971, the same year he started what has become one of the most remarkable ironman streaks in sports history. When Petty takes the green flag today, it will be his 482nd consecutive start in Winston Cup racing, spanning 17 seasons.

“What keeps me going?” he asked in response to an obvious question. “To tell the truth, I just love climbing in a race car and driving it. All the rest of what I do, signing autographs, giving interviews, making public appearances, visiting fan clubs, that’s all something I could do without, but it’s all part of the business.

“Racin’s the time I enjoy myself the most. When I’m strapped in that car, riding up along the high bank, ain’t nobody in the world’s going to bother me, ‘cept, of course, maybe another driver. But it’s my time, my private time, and I still enjoy doing it.

“I hear people saying maybe I ought to retire, that maybe I’m hanging on too long, but they don’t understand what racing means to me. Sure, I’d like it better if we’d win again, but I sure wouldn’t have a chance to win if I retired, so I’m sticking around a bit longer.”

Today’s race will be the 1,045th of his career. He has won 200 of them, but none since President Reagan was on hand on July 4, 1984, to watch him win the Firecracker 400 here at Daytona. Last year, he was definitely competitive as he had nine finishes in the top five, including a second to Dale Earnhardt at Bristol, Tenn.

Petty also finished third behind Bill Elliott and Benny Parsons in the Daytona 500 in 1987, his highest placing since he won No. 7 in 1981. That was the year Bobby Allison’s Pontiac LeMans was much the faster car but finished second when Petty was helped by a six-second fuel-only pit stop engineered by Dale Inman, Petty’s cousin and crew chief.

“The crew was responsible for that one,” Petty said. “The driver just followed instructions.”

No. 6 came in a strange manner, too. Petty was cruising along in third place in 1979, just ahead of Darrell Waltrip, when the front-runners, Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison, started playing demolition derby in the third turn of the final lap. When both of them crashed into the infield, Petty stepped on the gas and raced to the line just ahead of Waltrip.

“I wasn’t even thinking about much when I looked up and saw Cale and Donnie going at it like a couple of young pups. I just said ‘thank you.’ Racing’s a funny thing. You win some, and you lose some, and sometimes you don’t hardly know why. Either way.”

Curiously, Petty’s most memorable Daytona 500 was one he did not win. It was 1976, and the race settled down into a two-car battle between Petty’s Dodge and David Pearson’s Mercury. When they took the white flag for the final lap, Petty was leading, but Pearson moved ahead down the backstretch.

As the two cars flattened out through the fourth and final turn, Petty made one desperate effort to pass Pearson, but he nudged Pearson and the two cars began spinning wildly. Petty went twice around and stalled only a few yards shy of the finish line on the infield grass--with a dead engine.

Pearson, meanwhile, managed to keep his motor running, and as Petty sat and watched, he crept toward the finish line at about 5 m.p.h. to take the checkered flag.

“Ain’t never been a finish like that,” Petty said. “And ain’t likely to ever be another one.”

Kyle Petty was standing by, listening.

“If the King says it, it’s so,” he said admiringly.

Yes, even Richard Petty’s son calls him the King.