Thirty-one down -- five to go
By Richard Petty, Special to Turner Sports Interactive
October 23, 2001
11:56 AM EDT (1556 GMT)
Five races left to go on the schedule for this season, and there is still a lot of traveling left to do.
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Richard Petty
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We head to Phoenix this week, then come back for the race at Rockingham, N.C. We follow that with Homestead, Fla. (just south of Miami), then Atlanta and we finish up with the makeup race at New Hampshire. Pretty busy five weeks, if you ask me.
Travel has always been a part of this circuit. This isn't like the NBA or NFL. We don't have "home" games. The closest we get at Petty Enterprises are the races at Rockingham and Martinsville. Rockingham is a little over an hour's drive south of us while Martinsville is about an hour's drive north of us.
I guess you could say that all of these last five races are about an hour's drive for us. Rockingham is an hour away -- the other four are a little less than an hour's drive to the Greensboro airport.
The hardest part is not necessarily the travel, as much as having the cars ready to go each week. Your New Hampshire car and your Atlanta car are going to be pretty different. You might have some similarities between the cars these last five races, but that's just the way the schedule happens to fall right now.
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Phoenix International Raceway
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Remember where we've been. We went from Charlotte, a one-and-a-half mile track that uses one type of car. Then we went to Martinsville, a half-mile track that requires a different kind of car. From there, we went to Talladega, and again, that's a totally different type of car. And now to Phoenix.
Yeah, the boys in the shop have been awfully busy these past several weeks.
Keep in mind we're already working on 2002. The first race might be in February, but we started working in that direction months ago. Besides the fact that we need to get cars ready to go for next year, we've also changed our engine program for next season -- what was Robert Yates Engines will be building them for us in 2002.
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Kyle Petty
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Kyle brought in a boy from Penske Racing as crew chief, Steven Lane, and we think he is going to do us a great job. We've been making some technological advances too, like working with a company out of Atlanta which is helping us with scale-model wind tunnel work. And there is plenty more going on.
This is a 52-week, seven-days-a-week sport. Baseball starts with spring training in April and they are almost in the World Series now. But even the champions have October until March off. Football starts in July for the pros, and ends in February. But they have from then until that July start -- at least three months, more for some -- to rest.
But stock car racing goes year-round. If we're not racing, we're testing. If we're not doing that, we're working in the shop. Next year doesn't even start next year, it starts this year. In a lot of ways, two or three years down the road has already started.
There is no such thing as standing still in the sport. If you're not moving forward, you are falling behind. If you are not two or three years ahead in some of your thinking, then you are two or three years behind everybody else. And believe me, catching up isn't easy at all.
I'd rather give Lance Armstrong a head start on his bicycle going up a mountain than give some of these teams a head start on working toward next season. Lance Armstrong would just beat you. These teams would embarrass you.
Yeah, there's a lot left to do the rest of this season. But we've got a long way to go -- and a lot of years to go.
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