Petty: '76 Daytona was exciting for fans ABC Sports Online

Richard Petty
It was great for the reason we were a Southern sport, very regional. This gave us our 15 minutes of fame, every time they would show us on TV. At the time this was happening, NASCAR was growing. I was just starting to get involved in racing. It's important to try to win some races and stuff. So, as the TV grew up, NASCAR grew up, I grew up. We all sort of grew up together.

ABC Sports
Is there one moment you remember, with racing, and Wide World of Sports?

Petty
I don't know. I just remember my accidents. I remember seeing on Wide World of Sports, must have been in the early '60s sometimes, Joe Weatherly and somebody got a beating at Arlington. And Chris Economaki came in and was going to interview one of them sitting there in the pits. It was really a funny situation to the people in racing who knew what was going on.

ABC Sports
Out of your Daytona 500 victories, which one do you remember the most?

Petty
We were real fortunate. We won a few of 'em. Every one of them had a dramatic deal around it. In '64, I won it. That was the first superspeedway race we had won. We won the last one, I guess, in '81 or something. That was a dramatic deal. And '79, when Cale (Yarborough) and Donnie (Allison) got into a wreck and we won the race by default. So you remember all of 'em -- a little bit, about all of 'em.

ABC Sports
Can you talk about the end of that '76 race with David Pearson?

Petty
In '76, Daytona came down to the last lap, and I was leading the race.

David was behind me. I knew he was going to drive by me. He got a running start up the backstretch and drafted by me. As he went into 3.3, he went a little bit high, and I went under him. I got up beside of him, to 3 and 4 and thought I had cleared off of 4, but I hadn't quite cleared him.

I came off and moved out, to try to take up as much racetrack as I could. I left about six inches of clearing. My right rear hit his left front. And when we hit, then all heck broke loose, spinning and all this stuff. After spinning, he got his (car) cranked up, and came across and won. It was pretty exciting for the fans, and pretty exciting sitting in the car, too.