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Kyle Petty: Racing for God and Son

By Andrew Knox
The 700 Club

CBN.comThere’s no question that NASCAR racing is America’s fastest growing sport. Last year, NASCAR sold over one billion dollars of merchandise. But since the very beginning, the name Petty has been synonymous with the sport. Reporter Andrew Knox traces the family’s incredible legacy and tells how they’re dealing with a devastating tragedy.

Level Cross. North Carolina. 1949. Thirty-five-year-old Lee Petty became one of NASCAR’s founding fathers when he decided to make a living racing cars. It was a wise choice…for the next 15 years Lee Petty was the sport’s biggest star, thanks to incredible victories such as his photo finish at the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959. Lee became NASCAR’s best driver, until another Level Cross native surpassed him.

“We didn’t look at competing with each other. We looked and said, ‘hey, you know we got twice as good a chance to win a race if we got two cars out there. And that’s the way we worked it,’” says Richard Petty.

He’s known as “The King.”  Back in the ‘50s, Richard dreamed of being the chief mechanic for his dad, Lee Petty. But once he got behind the wheel he was hooked…and there were two generations of Pettys circling the tracks.  When Lee retired in 1964, Richard not only won the Daytona 500 like dad, he did it 6 more times. The Petty legacy didn’t end with his record 200 career victories. Kyle, Richard’s son, wanted to be a racecar driver… just like dad and granddad.

“He came down, he’d wander around in the shop and the boys would have to run him off. He’d get in the cars and play racer and he grew up around it,” Richard says.

“I was in the second or third grade before I realized everybody’s father didn’t own a racecar and go to racetracks on the weekend. I just thought that’s how everybody made a living,” Kyle says.

“My father’d done it. I’d done it. Then, it was his turn, and ah so he took the mantle and ran with it,” Richard says.

Kyle became the first third-generation driver to win a NASCAR race. And wouldn’t you know it? Adam wanted to be just like his dad. Kyle’s son inherited that famous Petty smile and a passion that was even stronger than the three generations before.

“Adam was probably more dedicated at what he wanted to do. He made up his mind at 14 or 15 years old, ‘I want to be a race car driver,’” Richard says.

Dedication led to victory for this 18 year old at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But sadly this four generation family of racers lost it’s patriarch a year later when Lee Petty died at the age of 86. Just five weeks later, an already grieving family was hit with more devastating news. During a practice run at New Hampshire International Speedway, a crash took the life of 19-year-old Adam Petty.

Kyle couldn’t begin to put into words the pain that he and his wife endured after Adam’s death.

“I had an uncle that got killed in 1975 at Talladega, my mother’s brother during a pit-road accident. That’s when I gave my life to Jesus Christ because I realized there was more, more here.  And I realized you can’t turn back the clock. You can’t go back and re-do yesterday, and the same thing with Adam. When Adam’s accident happened instantly I realized we couldn’t go back. It still hurts the same, it still hurts the same. There’s plenty of times I drive through the racetrack, drive into a racetrack and a lot of memories of Adam come back because we spent so much time together at a racetrack and it breaks my heart. I’ll sit in the car and cry and there’s times I wake-up in the middle of the night crying. But, I’m not the only person that goes through that, Patti goes through that,” Kyle says.

Patti spent countless hours at the racetrack with Adam and Kyle, and cherishes the moments they shared together before each race.

“We always had prayer together. Well as Adam came along, I would catch myself walking with both of them or one or the other. Finally I said, ‘Adam I maybe ought not walk with you maybe you don’t want to be a mama’s boy or see people walking with your mother or maybe you want to meet girls.’ And he said, ‘No, I want to walk with you. You’re the prettiest girl here and I want to be seen with you.’ And it just brightened my day and it made my day because he didn’t care. He wanted to walk with his mother. He wanted to have prayer with his parents and he was proud of that as far as being associated with being a Christian,” Patti says.

Patti and Kyle are strong Christians, but after Adam’s death there was a time when they doubted God’s faithfulness to their family.

“I think if, if I said no I would probably be lying to myself and to other people. I think that others that live through this need to understand that that’s just a very normal feeling. The hardest thing was that we said prayers together, we always had family prayer together and I asked the Lord’s hand to be on him and he accepted God’s strength for him the next day, and I asked the Lord to put His angels of protection around his car, and to be with him. So I remember for days and weeks after saying, but God I put that prayer in motion you know I asked for your protection around his car. And it came to revelation that it was an accident it was nothing that God did to him and all I needed to do was look to God to use it for His good.”

“I must have got 20 million help books on how to deal with grief and how to deal with everything. And Patti and I both said the same thing, the only help book there is is the Bible. Walk to your Bible, open up your Bible and the Lord will lead you to a passage. There’s a relevant passage that he’ll lead you to to what’s going on in your life today. And that’s everyday, that’s not just in hard times, that’s everyday….  God wouldn’t do anything to me and give me more than I can handle. I can handle this, but I can’t handle it alone. ‘You’ve got to help me.’ By saying, ‘you’ve got to help me,’ then that burden’s lifted off your shoulders. It’s still hard, but there’s always help there and you always feel like somebody’s walking with you,” Kyle says.

Adam’s granddad Richard felt that same comfort, knowing God had not abandoned the family.

“If you know me I’m not an emotional person outside OK,” Richard says. “This is the way its supposed to be, now we’ve got to pick it up and go forward with it because somewhere down the line the Good Lord’s got a PLAN and we’re a part of that plan…we’ve got to continue to go forward to try to make that plan work.”

“We’ve been able to use Adam as a platform to witness to other people.  I think in any kind of tragedy, that’s what you do. You don’t just stop. It’s what you do after the tragedy that counts,” Kyle says.

Kyle continues to race in honor of his son driving Adam’s #45 Dodge. And “The King” is there to support him for just about every race.

 “I might miss one or two a year, but I usually go, don’t do nothing but I go,” Richard says laughing.

Quitting racing was never a consideration for Kyle, it’s what the Petty’s love to do. But, the pain of losing Adam will never go away.

“I think our faith has helped us deal with it more than anything else, and it gives us a peace, some sort of peace of Adam and of what he was to us,” Kyle says. “And the way I look at it now it was a blessing. It was a blessing to have him for 19 years. It was a blessing for us for him to be a part of our family. It’s just an amazing comfort to know that you can turn everything over to Jesus Christ.”

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