1,000 Greatest Drivers: Richard Petty
This rocks!
I’ll tell you what rocks later, but I’m going to do my standard LearnedLeague review first.
I assumed the answer to 2 was Richmond because it was a few years after Jamestown was founded, but I wasn’t even thinking about other regions of the country. I know everybody talks about Jamestown as the first American settlement when it actually wasn’t. I’d never heard of Carrefour and I put Benetton, probably just because I knew about it from F1. I’d never heard of carbonara either, but since it seems like every other person who plays this game except me is a foodie, this time at least I knew to award my opponent 0 points for this question since apparently everyone finds these questions easier than I do. I put omelet.
Okay, after I incorrectly answered Hubble in one of the matches I discussed yesterday, I again got this wrong, this time putting Doppler. I had never heard of any of those people in question #3 except for Duke Ellington but I hadn’t heard of either of those songs or knew his real name. I put Shorty. I had no idea about question #4 and I doubt many others do too. I put Andorra. Is there even a current events story involving Hungary? I didn’t think so, but I guess I haven’t been keeping up. United Fruit Company I should have gotten because I did know that once upon a time. I just put Chiquita.
Normally I get all the pop music questions, but I whiffed on this one, even though it’s technically listed as a television question. I put down the wrong Simon, putting American Idol creator Simon Fuller instead of Simon Cowell, although the Syco (which I think I had just read past) would have made that obvious. Didn’t lose any points for that anyway. And then I answered Bangkok for #4 because I thought that name sounded Thai, I guess because of the structure of that name with the th and the weird consonant combinations, but I knew small city likely ruled that out (unless they were talking about its size in 1728) and I had never heard of Nuuk. Really, this is a current events question since I imagine almost no one hard of Nuuk until Trump threatened to invade Greenland (which I was pointedly avoiding paying attention to), so I’m not surprised I didn’t get it. I’m glad I pulled solipsism, ‘cause my guess is that’s something a lot of people would miss. It’s a word you see a lot if you read anything philosophical, but I wasn’t 100% sure on the meaning tbh, but the solo connection helped. Despite being a niche celebrity gamer, I had actually never heard of speedrunning until a tournament Scrabble player suggested maybe I should do it. I mean yeah, if I wanted to attract a streaming audience, sure, but that isn’t really where I am in life anymore.
This is my most embarrassing miss I think. I just didn’t read Question 5 closely enough, which kept me from winning this outright. I put auteur because obviously it is an important word stemming from French cinema, but I just glanced over the police/criminal aspect of that, which made noir obvious. Should have gotten that. I’ve certainly heard of Brecht and Brecht-Weill certainly rings a bell, but I ended up putting Mann, thinking of the Brill Building songwriters Mann-Weil (not remembering either of their first names). Yep, way more knowledgeable about pop music than any other form… Admittedly, pony is a question I didn’t expect to get tbh, though I thought it was the best guess.
I probably would not have gotten the first question had I not actually listened to a podcast episode of Michael and Us about that specific movie. Opal was just a random guess I got right that I did not actually expect to. I put Gauls for #4 but I thought that as wrong. I put eureka for #5, which I think was a very good guess since it is associated with making discoveries and the word does have a similar structure to Sri Lanka. Didn’t know #6 at all. Come to think of it, I have heard of Nadia Comaneci and I must have picked that up via osmosis from the news media at the time when I was a very young boy, but that was too early for me to be paying much attention to sports news, and even if I pulled her name, I would not have been able to spell it. I put Martina Navratilova and that was a fine guess I think, even though I knew the big news story about her was when she came out as a lesbian.
Well, I finally got a couple more cleaners to inspect the house yesterday to see what accommodations will need to be made for Mom to be able to come home and be admitted into in an in-home care agency. One of the cleaners I contacted also happened to have experience working in nursing homes as well as doing construction work, so he was able to give me all the logistical information to know what I need to have done. He told me that the likely reason why the contractor I was assigned through Onondaga County Community Development hasn’t gotten to work yet on the ramp construction and roof repair even though I have a signed contract stating that it was supposed to be finished by July 7 was because they are expecting that since Mom’s estate will be charged for the repair work, they won’t get their money back since they are assuming all the money in the estate will be drained, so they’re assuming they would just be doing free work for nothing and that is why they’re putting it off. Ironically, since the nursing home is charging somewhere between $15,000 and $18,000 a month and all of that is going to be charged from the estate apart from the $1,000 a month that is coming out of her Social Security, the odds of them getting paid for their work increase drastically the sooner Mom comes home, but this is what needed to be done for her to come home. The contractor also told me that because of the recent scandals about mistreatment at Van Duyn that there is a chance I might be able to challenge the government and the Medicaid Estate Recovery Program and not lose the house. I still think I probably don’t want it anymore after Mom dies simply because after all her hoarding and me getting sicker, I want less to maintain. I’d honestly just want to live in a room or a studio apartment at most, although even those likely cost more than what I’m paying for her mortgage.
Anyway, this contractor offered to install the ramp himself, patch the roof, and do a deep clean for $1,200. I told him I didn’t quite have the money yet but I would after my next paycheck, so he lowered it to $650. Now I’m definitely going to work with him and I’m just waiting to hear back from him for his PayPal email address. This is maybe the first thing I’ve been excited about since my first book was published. If I can get all these things done, maybe I can finally attract an in-home care agency. This contractor does not think I have bed bugs in the carpet (I didn’t either), but the in-home care agency I contacted last year was disgusted and I knew I had to do a deep clean and I’m now pissed at myself for it taking me a year and a half to get all this done. I wanted to get all this done around the same time as the ramp construction and the roof repair, and I filed the application for that in September. If I’d just had a better sense for logistics myself and if I’d known that there might be independent contractors who would do better/faster/cheaper jobs locally, I could’ve gotten her out a long time ago.
This is what happens when you don’t know anybody locally, and it’s one of my biggest frustrations. I thought when I moved back to North Syracuse that I’d reconnect with old high school classmates, teachers, people I knew back then, but I just didn’t. Most of the teachers I’d known had retired. Since I was in the gifted classes, most of the people I knew rushed off for more lucrative jobs on the coasts and the people who still lived here tended to be people I didn’t know as well. And then it didn’t help that Mom didn’t want me leaving the house. I know having her come back might not be in my best interest since she was ridiculously overprotective in terms of never wanting me to go anywhere, and I’d have to watch over her pretty much nonstop (admittedly, I would be able to get paid from the estate balance myself to take care of her during the hours when an in-home care agency doesn’t operate, so that could help me position myself for when I lose the house). But I know I need to do this for her because I know how people are being abused there. She hasn’t been abused there to that extent (even though they did lose her dentures and her cell phone) but she needs to get out of there, especially since Adult Protective Services tricked us by forcing her in there and not even letting me challenge it. Weirdly, I do still kind of envy all the social engagements they had there and I wish those kind of things existed for younger people (as I’ve said so many times), but that isn’t worth the mistreatment. Anyway, even though she was really unpleasant in the last couple years before she got forced in there, she’s been a bit nicer in recent months aside from her interactions with her roommates, and I know I am obliged to get her out, even if some people would say it wouldn’t be in my own self-interest in some ways.
I wrote this one pretty slowly because obviously Petty is one of the biggies, and I’ve got two more biggies with Sebastian Vettel and David Pearson coming up. I did not have a best race for Petty yet, and I spent way too many hours that I should’ve been doing something else reading through all of Petty’s wins in my Greg Fielden books to pick the correct race for his best drive, but I think I got it. He also had a Dover race where he came back from six laps down and won (probably should’ve linked to my own site, but I linked to racing-reference), and I considered that one, but ultimately rejected it because Buddy Arrington intentionally stopped on track to bring out a caution in that one, without which Petty would not have been able to overtake Dick Brooks for the win. (Granted, Benny Parsons probably would’ve won that one without the caution since I believe Brooks passed him right after the restart.) My surprising discovery tonight, which I guess I hadn’t noticed before, is that Petty’s superspeedway record in the ‘60s was actually surprisingly humdrum/mediocre - he even had a 13-month winless streak on superspeedways at his absolute peak from late 1967 to late 1968. Since the superspeedway races offered vastly more points, that probably is a big part of why David Pearson had an edge against him in championship battles and since they also had deeper fields, I think that is a major strike against him as well. Nonetheless, I do still probably rate him as #3 all-time, but I state in my last paragraph what keeps him from being #1 in my book.
RICHARD PETTY……………………..USA
Born: July 2, 1937
Best year: 1971
Best drive: 1967 Volunteer 500 at Bristol International Speedway
NASCAR’s most successful driver, the son of three-time champion Lee and father of eight-time winner Kyle, Richard first ran semi-regularly in 1959 as Lee’s teammate at Petty Engineering (later Petty Enterprises) in the #43 car during Lee’s final championship season. Although he won his first races in 1960, Lee typically outran him until his career-ending crash at the 1961 Daytona qualifying race. Petty was the main benefactor after many premature deaths and sudden retirements amongst early ‘60s superstars gutted the fields, creating a massive power vacuum. David Pearson had an early edge over Petty, winning three out of four championships when they both competed full-time, in part because Petty sometimes struggled on superspeedways, which awarded vastly more points. In 1967, Petty was the only full-time factory-backed driver, but he was nonetheless electrifying, winning a record 27 races, coming back from laps down twice to win at Bristol, then winning ten straight races shortly thereafter including his only Southern 500.
Although Petty’s ‘60s tend to get more hype, I’m more impressed by his ‘70s because he was a lot more consistent across all track types. Despite 18 wins in 1970, he lost the title because he missed five races after flipping at Darlington, but he bounced back with two pairs of back-to-back titles in 1971-1972 and 1974-1975, winning 21 races in 1971 and a modern-era record 13 in 1975. He significantly benefited from Pearson dropping to part-time and Cale Yarborough’s ill-fated switch to IndyCar. By the time Yarborough’s Junior Johnson team had full funding, Yarborough dominated the next half-decade.
Petty went winless and had 40% of his stomach removed in 1978, but improbably recovered to win his seventh championship in 1979. However, Petty’s crew chief Dale Inman abruptly left after his seventh and last Daytona 500 win in 1981, after which Petty Enterprises declined rapidly. Petty shockingly switched to Mike Curb’s team after a massive penalty at Charlotte in 1983 for winning with an oversized engine and mismatched tires, where he earned his 200th and final win in the 1984 Firecracker 400 when he beat Yarborough to a race-ending caution in a photo finish with President Reagan in attendance. He returned to Petty Enterprises in 1986 but never won again.
Petty leads nearly every baseline statistical category in NASCAR Cup Series history by large margins. Even when I adjusted the win list for field strength, he held a significant lead. He also leads all drivers with 100+ teammate comparisons in my stock car model. However, I still rank him behind Earnhardt and Johnson primarily because IndyCar drivers were the best oval drivers in the world during Petty’s heyday. They crossed over and won NASCAR races and the first six IROC titles, while no contemporary NASCAR drivers did the reverse and Petty never even won an IROC race. NASCAR drivers clearly overtook IndyCar drivers for oval supremacy in either the ‘80s or ‘90s, which is why I rate Earnhardt and Johnson higher, but if you prefer Petty, I’d be hard-pressed to argue.
Stock car model: #9 of 319 (.248)
Teammate head-to-heads: 115-65 (1-3 vs. Buck Baker, 11-4 vs. Buddy Baker, 3-0 vs. Bunkie Blackburn, 1-0 vs. Darel Dieringer, 2-6 vs. Pete Hamilton, 1-0 vs. Jim Hurtubise, 1-0 vs. Bob James, 1-0 vs. Tiny Lund, 2-0 vs. Hershel McGriff, 1-0 vs. Marvni Panch, 21-15 vs. Jim Paschal, 43-3 vs. Kyle Petty, 11-31 vs. Lee Petty, 10-1 vs. Maurice Petty, 1-0 vs. G.C. Spencer, 2-0 vs. Jabe Thomas, 0-1 vs. Speedy Thompson, 1-0 vs. Joe Weatherly, 2-1 vs. Bob Welborn)
Year-by-year: 1960: E-, 1961: C+, 1962: E, 1963: E, 1964: E, 1965: E-, 1966: E, 1967: 5, 1968: E, 1969: E, 1970: E, 1971: 2, 1972: E, 1973: E-, 1974: E, 1975: 5, 1976: E-, 1977: E-, 1978: C+, 1979: E, 1980: C+, 1981: C+, 1982: C, 1983: C+, 1984: C+, 1986: C-, 1987: C