Nothing Petty About This Kind of Incentive : Auto racing: If Kyle Petty gets one more victory or pole, he and his crew of 17 get a trip to the Bahamas, courtesy of car owner Felix Sabates.

The pressure on Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt in their separate quests for a $1-million check as the NASCAR Winston Cup champion is immense, but what about Kyle Petty?

The third-generation stock car driver needs a victory here Sunday in the Checker 500 or a pole or victory Nov. 18 in the Atlanta Journal 500 to reach a goal set for him by his car owner, Felix Sabates. If he reaches that goal, the reward is an expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas for his crew of 17 and their wives or girlfriends.

“One thing I know for certain, I don’t have to worry that all the crew isn’t putting out 100%,” Petty said Friday as he watched the crew change an engine in his baby blue No. 42 Pontiac Grand Prix. “They’re as (excited) about the trip as I am.”

Before the season, Sabates set a goal of three victories or poles for Petty.

Kyle got two of them the same weekend, winning his first pole and then following it up by winning the Goodwrench 500 at North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham, N.C. It was only the third race of the season, but it earned Petty a NASCAR single-race record purse of $294,450, thanks to an oil company bonus of $228,600 for being the first pole winner to win a race in 26 starts.

The bonus was $7,600 a race and the money rolled over 26 times before Petty hit the jackpot.

Petty got his own private bonus from Sabates after the race--a gold-colored Rolls Royce.

“That race meant a tremendous amount to me,” Sabates said. “It proved that the team that Gary (Nelson) and I had assembled could not only win, but could dominate a race. And it also proved that Kyle really has the heart it takes to be a winning race-car driver.”

Sabates knows something about having heart.

When he was 16, he was in the hills of his native Cuba, fighting Fidel Castro. Only the intervention of his priest and his father kept him from getting killed. The gang he had been with was wiped out shortly after he left.

“My father faked an ‘emergency appendectomy’ for me and had me sent to Miami for ‘emergency care,’ ” Sabates recalled. “It was the only way I could have got out of Cuba.

“I landed in Miami with two shirts, $25 and two boxes of cigars. I sold the cigars at the airport for another $25 and went to live with a friend of my father’s in Miami for a week. I couldn’t speak English or anything.”

Sabates bounced around, living with friends or relatives wherever he could, scratching out a living washing pots and pans in a hospital, selling cookware door to door, sanding furniture in a North Carolina factory--anything he could find.

“I was living with my aunt, but we didn’t get along and she kicked me out of the house on Christmas Eve,” he said. “I went and lived in a flophouse . . . for a few months.”

By 1963 he had learned enough English to get a job selling cars in Charlotte, N.C., where he worked for Rick Hendrick, now one of NASCAR’s leading car owners. There he also met Walter Rice, a friend of his father, who suggested that Sabates quit selling cars and help him establish a new company, Top Sales, Inc.

Top Sales, which among other things distributes Nintendo games throughout the southwestern United States, did more than $400 million in business last year.

In 1988, Sabates decided he wanted to start a race team. His first step was to hire Nelson as crew chief. Nelson, who hails from Redlands, Calif., began his apprenticeship on the West Coast as a mechanic for Ivan Baldwin before heading south, where he directed Bobby Allison’s only Winston Cup championship season in 1983.

Next he looked for a promising driver and lured young Petty away from the Wood Brothers’ team. At the time, Petty was torn between racing and singing. He had been racing Winston Cup cars for seven seasons but had won only two races and had never finished higher than seventh in the standings.

“People never gave Kyle a fair shot,” Sabates said. “Half of him imagined that he was the next Willie Nelson and the other half thought he had to be the next Richard Petty. It was tough on him, but I think he’s back on the right path now.

“I think Kyle’s best years are ahead of him. If you look at the top drivers of today, most of them have become very successful after they turn 30. Kyle turned 30 last June and I think he will do very well in the next couple of years as we grow together as a team.”

Petty did not fare so well Friday, though, qualifying 26th at 121.729 m.p.h., not good enough to make the first 20 qualifiers. Rusty Wallace, in another Pontiac, won the pole at 124.443.

A second 20 will qualify today for Sunday’s 40-car field.

“The car races better than it did in practice,” Petty said. “We’re not worried. We’ll make the show tomorrow.”

His speed, though, was faster than his illustrious father’s. The seven-time NASCAR champion could coax only 120.128 m.p.h. from his Pontiac.

“The track was fast, but I was slow,” quipped Richard Petty.