Getting down to business

By Richard Petty, Special to Turner Sports Interactive
July 6, 2001
12:49 PM EDT (1649 GMT)

RANDLEMAN, N.C. -- For most race fans, it's time to get serious.

Starting this week, the second half of the year begins. OK, I know there are 20 races left to go, that we have only run 16 so far and that, technically, the race at Chicago in two weeks is the real halfway point of the season.

But in the minds -- and hearts -- of the people in NASCAR racing, the Pepsi 400 at Daytona starts the second half.

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This race also starts my column on behalf of the folks at TNT. They, along with NBC, will be televising all of the races the second half of the season.

FOX did the first half, and they did a great job. And the TNT/NBC folks have some pretty big shoes to fill -- but knowing the people who will be working, no doubt they are going to do a fantastic job.

I've known Allen Bestwick since he first moved to Florida to take a job with MRN Radio; he was good then, and he's good now.

I've raced against Benny Parsons; he is as good in the broadcast booth as he was as a driver. Wally Dallenbach has raced our cars here at Petty Enterprises, and he tells it like it is.

The guys on pit road have a lot of experience. Bill Weber is one of the most talented people in television, in my opinion. Matt Yocum has to be pretty good -- he started the year with FOX and is going to finish the year with TNT/NBC.

Mike Wells was the director for ESPN, and he brings those talents to this crowd. There is a ton of talent here, and I think the broadcasts are going to be great.

I believe we're going to give them some pretty stuff to talk about too. The racing has been pretty good all year long. Sure, like any sport we've had an occasional race that was a runaway but, for the most part, there has been a lot of drama and a lot of excitement.

In the meantime, keep the pressure on them. We have three cars out there -- John Andretti in the No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge (by the way, he is running a special Hamburger Helper paint scheme this weekend); Buckshot Jones in the No. 44 Georgia-Pacific Dodge; and Kyle Petty in the No. 45 Sprint Dodge.

John Andretti (left)

If you're not seeing enough of them on TV, let me know. I've got home numbers for Allen, Benny, Wally and all those cats.

It all starts at Daytona on Saturday night -- on NBC, I should add. You'll want to be either sitting in the grandstands or pulled up close in front of your television set for it.

I've been going to Daytona since there was a Daytona. What I mean by that is Daytona was, a long time ago, a pretty sleepy beach town on the Atlantic Coast of Florida.

The only reason to go there was to get from Charleston to Miami and back again. But they started speed runs there in the early 1920s.

In fact, Daytona was the original Bonneville Salt Flats. If somebody was going to set a land-speed record, they went to the beach at Daytona. It was flat and, when the tide was out, pretty hard. It was a good place to go fast.

Later on, they started racing there. The first beach races were in the mid-1930s but there weren't a whole lot of rules involved. It was just bring a car and see who could go the distance the fastest.

Bill France started promoting those races in the late 1930s after the city started losing money. The city's problem at the time was that so many people could sneak in and watch the beach races for free -- they raced down A1A and then came back to the north on the beach.

France put signs up in the weeds where folks would sneak through that read, "Danger! Snakes!" All of the sudden, paid attendance went up and the races started making money.

Those races evolved into NASCAR-sanctioned races, once NASCAR started in 1949. That's when my daddy, Lee Petty, started coming to Daytona to race, and he brought the family along.

After that, the sport kept growing. In 1959, they opened Daytona International Speedway and Daddy won that first Daytona 500 -- after they took three days looking at different pictures to decide the winner.

The sport has grow since then. The past 10 years has shown a lot of growth but, if you go back in 10-year increments, the sport grew pretty much in every one of them.

With what FOX and TNT/NBC are bringing now - putting us in front of more people than ever nationally on a weekly basis -- you figure we're just going to keep on growing.

So, yeah, this is the second half of the year starting now. But it's the beginning of something pretty big. I hope you'll plan on joining me here and we'll watch this thing keep growing together.