In this episode of 'Shift: NASCAR’s evolution through the eyes of The King,' Richard Petty tells the story of the first time he laid eyes on Daytona International Speedway in 1959. 'Shift' is a series of conversations between Richard and Kyle Petty highlighting the evolution of NASCAR's 75-year history through the dark lenses of Richard Petty's famous glasses.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Richard Petty in car number 43 grabs the lead.
00:05 - Here comes Petty.
00:06 Richard Petty begins to close in from second place.
00:09 For racing fans, this is such sweet thunder.
00:13 (dramatic music)
00:16 (dramatic music)
00:19 (dramatic music)
00:29 (dramatic music)
00:39 - 1959, Bill Francis built a brand new
00:44 two and a half mile track at Daytona.
00:46 None of us had ever seen the thing.
00:51 We had no idea what it was.
00:53 And we went through the tunnel in the third and fourth turn.
00:57 It was just so massive, but it looked like a wall.
01:01 Okay, and we got out and it was just flat.
01:03 Said, man, God, this is something else.
01:06 21 year old kid, I go out there and I run
01:12 one lap on the flat.
01:13 I get up on the bank, I get the black flag.
01:16 All of our racetracks, 90% of them was dirt.
01:24 And it was all short tracks.
01:26 So all of a sudden you go to a big track like Daytona
01:29 and man, I mean, it's just so massive.
01:32 It's just like going to the moon, another world.
01:42 Nobody had any experience on the racetrack.
01:45 I think I run 130 mile an hour.
01:47 Well, that's as fast as I'd ever been.
01:49 We come up on lap cars.
01:52 First thing you know, them lap cars is running with us.
01:55 I'm sitting there and I said, I know what I'm gonna do.
01:58 They all get, we come off on the backstretch
02:00 and I think I'm running maybe third.
02:02 I pull out and just blow by them all.
02:04 I said, man, this is easy.
02:06 I go through three and four, come off of four,
02:09 lay a leg by me.
02:11 Okay, I just made my move too quick.
02:14 We was geared to run 130 mile an hour.
02:16 All of a sudden I'm running 145.
02:19 I didn't know nothing about drafting or nothing else,
02:22 but I knew something was happening.
02:23 When I went there, I had just started driving.
02:31 So I didn't have a lot of experience.
02:33 So I didn't have to unlearn anything.
02:35 My dad went there, Powerball Roberts, Curtis Turner,
02:38 you know, all these guys going.
02:40 They had to unlearn on the short track.
02:43 You had to wait for somebody to slip to get by
02:45 because it was a completely different kind of racing.
02:48 At that time, NASCAR was trying to get away from their roots
02:57 from their bootlegging deals, dirt track.
03:00 They were trying to go to the next level
03:02 and Daytona started to send to the next level.
03:07 We went along and built those racetracks,
03:10 expanded NASCAR and made more sponsorships.
03:15 Look at, hey, these guys is all over the country.
03:18 It's not just a Southern sport anymore.
03:20 That started a new era.
03:23 That started a speedway era.
03:25 They started building super speedways
03:28 because the crowds were starting to gain up
03:31 instead of having 15 or 20,000 people,
03:34 having 80 or 100,000 people.
03:37 You could go to a big track and see a big race,
03:40 see NASCAR guys, you know, coming in,
03:43 seeing what they could do.
03:45 It was just in a growing period.
03:48 (upbeat music)
03:51 (upbeat music)
03:53 (upbeat music)
03:56 [Music]