“The King” Speaks as Rain Settled Over Darlington
DARLINGTON, S.C. (AP) - Richard Petty bundled up tight in a long black coat Saturday to keep the chill away as he walked to his motorhome inside Darlington Raceway.
“Can you believe it’s cold for the Southern 500?” The King asked.
That’s what happens when you move a race from the Labor Day spot it held for 54 years to the middle of November for its last running. Petty says the door closed on the historic race last year, when Terry Labonte earned the checkered flag.
“When they took it away, then it’s just another race,” Petty said. “The Southern 500 is Labor Day.”
In 2003, NASCAR decided to switch the Labor Day weekend race to California Speedway, giving Darlington’s Southern 500 its November date. Then this spring, NASCAR altered Darlington’s schedule again, removing one of its two race dates for 2005 and putting its lone weekend on Mother’s Day weekend, which had been a sacrosanct off week for nearly two decades.
Petty doesn’t mind the changes. After all, the car owner says, you have to do things differently to expand. Leaving Darlington and the saturated market in the Carolinas is good for business, he says. And besides, Petty has never had much luck with Darlington’s tricky, 1.366-mile oval. Of his Nextel Cup-record 200 victories, only three of them came at “The Track Too Tough To Tame.” “My fortunes here weren’t too good,” Petty said. NASCAR’s King said it seemed like he led every race held at Darlington for 10 or 12 years and just couldn’t cross the finish line first. “My daddy told me, ‘You can overcome everything but fate,”‘ Richard Petty said. “I guess that was my fate here.”
