Kyle Petty - Swerve or Die: Life at My Speed in the First Family of NASCAR Racing

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To my mom, who made me the person I am.

To my wife, Morgan, who showed me again who that person was and who I could be.

Call Mike Helton.

I was in England with my daughter Montgomery Lee, looking at Welsh horses.

My son Adam was at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway with his red-and-black no. 45 Sprint PCS Chevrolet. His regular guysChris Hussey, Chris Martin, Scott Kuhn, Steve Mitchell, and Stephen Patseavouraswere at the track with him. A rising young racer and his crew, all good friends, doing exactly what they wanted to be doing with their lives. The Busch 200 was set for Saturday. Friday was for practice and qualifying. All of which just gave me another reason to smile.

The Cup teams had the weekend off. For us, it was a two-week breather between the Pontiac Excitement 400 in Richmond, which Dale Earnhardt, Jr., had won, becoming the first repeat winner of the season, and the Winston, the all-star race on May 20 in Charlotte. A perfect time for a father-daughter getaway!

The NASCAR world had been buzzing about Adam ever since hed won an ARCA race (part of the NASCAR feeder series named for the Automobile Racing Club of America), his first ever, at eighteen years and three months old, the youngest driver to ever do that. You know whose record he broke? Mine. I was eighteen years and eight months old. There we were, Adam and I, already making our own family traditions! He was now in his second season as a Busch Series regular, itching to move up to Cup Series racing, NASCARs main event. No one could say for sure how far Adam might go in racing. It was much too early to speculate. But when people asked me how I felt about my sons career choice, I always had the same answer: Like any dad feels when his teenager leaves the driveway for the first time. I sure hope he makes it back safe.

I thought the line was funny. It almost always got a laugh.

It had been quite a spring for the Pettys. On April 5, my grandfather, Lee Petty, the patriarch of the Petty racing family, had died at eighty-six. What my grandfather started, my father, Richard Petty, and my uncle, Maurice Petty, carried onit always felt more to me like a family business or a family farm than anything as grand as most people made it out to be. Stock car racing had supported our family for more than half a century, brought amazing joy into our lives, and gotten Adam labeled the first fourth-generation professional athlete in America. That sounded nice. But when you thought about it, it was also an awfully weighty legacy for a nineteen-year-old to haul around. Adam was just a kid, as anyone who knew him at all could plainly see.

And lets be honest, I wasnt exactly tearin em up in my no. 44 Hot Wheels Pontiac. Just one top 10 finish so far that season, my twentieth as a Cup regular. But I wasnt sweating it. The season was just getting rolling, and I felt like I was starting to fall into a good rhythm. Plus, I had decided in my mind to step back from driving and move out of my sons way as my father, for personal and financial reasons, had been unable to move out of mine. My dad won his seventh NASCAR championship the year I started. He loved racing too much to quit. I didnt want to do that to Adam. I wanted him to have every chance to thrive. Once he was really up and running, he should be the Petty driver, I believed.

Montgomery Lee was fourteen and loved horses at least as much as her brother Adam loved race cars, which is to say she really, really loved them. She rode Western and seemed to have a knack for it. She had a beautiful bay mare named Dawn, and theyd been doing well together at some serious horse shows. Montgomery Lee wanted to see what showing horses was like in England. So, we were going to a show at a castle outside London. For me, it was that one week a year where it was just the two of us.

I didnt know much about horses, and what I did know was entirely from the dads perspective. I knew it didnt make any difference whether your daughter had a $2 million horse or a $2 horse. It still ate the same amount of food. And I knew that, however much you thought your daughters love of horses was going to cost you, you had no earthly idea. As I told my friend Jeff Burton when his daughter started riding: Figure up how much that horse is gonna cost and multiply it by ten. Get the money in five-dollar bills, and go to the Bank of America building in Charlotte. Then, throw all that money off the roof. Itll be much cheaper that way. Jeff didnt believe meuntil one day he did. If only I had known, he said with a laugh. He wasnt complaining any more than I was. My daughter loved horses, and her daddy was along for the ride.

We had a magical Saturday at the horse show. The beautiful castle. The impressive animals. The talented riders. The look on Montgomery Lees face as she took it all in. There was a message waiting for me in the lobby when we got back to the hotel.

Call Mike Helton.

From the highest highs to the lowest lows, no one has lived the NASCAR life quite the way that I have. Thankfully, along with the worst nightmare any father can imagine, Ive also been blessed with far more than my share of amazing experiences, special relationships, and thrilling race-day triumphs. Ill tell you this much, as NASCAR begins to reimagine its future and the sport confronts a whole new period of upheaval and change: Its been one hell of a ride so farfor me and for racingand I cant wait to share with you exactly what I see up ahead!

Born into racing royalty. The only son of NASCARs winningest driver ever. The grandson of one of the sports true pioneers. The nephew of our very first Hall of Fame engine builder. Its quite a family to represent, and through it all, Ive somehow managed to keep being Kyle.

I wouldnt attempt to tell the whole story of NASCAR entirely through people named Petty, but you almost could. My father, Richard, won two hundred races, a record that could easily hold forever, and seven Cup Series championships. Now well into his eighties, he remains NASCARs undisputed King and still has his fingers in damn near everything, including the racial reexamination that has gripped our sport. When all that exploded, Bubba Wallace, the talented young African American driver who demanded the Confederate flag be banned, was part of Richard Petty Motorsports. And there was my father, in his signature black Charlie 1 Horse cowboy hat, standing right at Bubbas side. Whatevers happening in NASCAR, my dads been at the center of the action for more than sixty years.

My Grandfather Petty was there at the start. He flipped his car in the very first NASCAR race ever and won the inaugural Daytona 500. His era began when stock car racing was little more than a bunch of country boys in the moonshine business trying to outrun each other and the tax man. It was Grandfather Petty who became NASCARs first full-time driver and one of its earliest stars. Before him, driving a race car wasnt even considered a job. He finished top 5 in points every year from NASCARs formation in 1949 until 1959 and won three national championships in those years. It should have been four. But he pissed off NASCAR founder Bill France, who docked him in points for driving in an unsanctioned but very well-paid race. Grandfather Petty didnt care. He always preferred the cash to the trophies.