Richard Petty grew up around stock car racing; not Indy car racing. But when "The King" of NASCAR was a teenager working on his father Lee's stock car in the early 1950s, he remembers hearing Sid Collins voice on the radio describing a race so epic that he was mesmerized.
Bill Vukovich, Johnny Parsons, Duke Nalon and others were battling it out at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
"It started at 11 a.m. in North Carolina and I'd be working on the race car and remember the Novi cars running," Petty said. "At that time, I had never been out in the real world of Indy car racing but I knew them by name. They were the big names of auto racing.
"To a boy lying under the car in Level Cross, N.C., the Indianapolis 500 was bigger than life. All of this happened before we ever had Daytona or anything like that in our sport when I started driving race cars in the late 1950s."
For years, Petty was a regular visitor on Pole Day for the Indy 500 because of his involvement with long-time sponsor STP. But in 2007, Petty attended on Race Day for the first time.
"Going to Indy, it's the biggest thing that happens in auto racing," he said. "Daytona is big in NASCAR but Indy is the biggest race there is. The big deal to me is seeing all those people there, all the enthusiasm and the command, `Gentleman, Start Your Engines,' then to see them come down for that first lap in a pack where you could throw a blanket over all of them.
"It kind of takes your breath away. I'm just real fortunate that I've been able to do this. When I wander around there, it's people I've known for 100 years. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was like old home week for me. It was a day where I could let my hair down. I would hang out with the guys that drove for STP like Mario Andretti and Gordon Johncock.
"I appreciated what they had accomplished since 1909 when the track opened. I was also fascinated with the mechanical part of it - what they did with their cars; how they kept them on the ground, the suspension and the mechanical things they did to go as fast as they did. To me, it's like the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl or the World Series. It is the happening event of the time."
Petty will be at Indy on Race Day as the co-entrant for driver John Andretti, who will start 28th after bumping his way into the 33-car field in the No. 43 Window World car.
"I'm doing this through John Andretti," Petty said. "When he drove our car he wanted to do this but he had to concentrate on the Cup stuff. He put together a halfway program last year but I didn't get involved with it. This year I thought he put together a pretty good program with some pretty good guys. Window World got involved as the sponsor and it all came together this year to do the Month of May.
"When John got to talking to me, I said let's put it together."
Petty nearly put a deal together with A.J. Foyt back in the 1965 when Chrysler's Hemi engine was outlawed by NASCAR. Petty was under contract to Chrysler and did not compete in NASCAR, spending a year in drag racing instead.
"We were running over a USAC stock car race on the road course at IRP (now O'Reilly Raceway Park) and we came over to the Speedway to see A.J. Foyt," Petty said. "A lot of those teams worked over at the Speedway during the season out of those garages in Gasoline Alley. That was their home during the season. We went wandering over there and we knew Foyt and saw his shop and his car.
"He tried to stuff me into one of those things. He went into his locker and came out with a size 7 shoe. He said I had to put those shoes on because that was all the room there was for the brake and clutch and accelerator. That is when I knew that I couldn't be an Indy car driver because my feet were too big."
Petty's path may not have led him to a career as an Indy car driver, but he certainly left big footprints in the history of auto racing. On May 24, he will add another chapter to that history as a car entrant in the Indianapolis 500.
to come out of Indianapolis in recent memory, Bruno Junqueira wound up getting bumped from this year's Indianapolis 500, but not in the traditional way. A few hours after Junky posted one of the most impressive qualifying runs of the month, owner Eric Bachelart informed the 32-year-old veteran that Alex Tagliani would be replacing him in Sunday's 93rd Indianapolis 500.
