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By Karla Pomeroy
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Being a NASCAR commentator is getting to do all things NASCAR except drive the car

 

May 6, 2017



WORLAND — Former NASCAR driver Kyle Petty took time from his interview regarding his upcoming 2017 Charity Ride Across America to discuss NASCAR and his role as an analyst and color commentator with NBC.

He said among weekly duties he also will again be doing pre-race and post-race coverage with Dale Jarrett and Krista Voda. NBC takes over coverage of NASCAR in July.

Petty said it’s a lot different from racing. “I don’t feel as bad on Monday morning because I’m not sore and beat up because I’ve wrecked,” he said.

He added, “It has been surprising, I have to say, enjoyable. I’ve told people before, all I’ve ever wanted to be is a race car driver. When you’re a little boy, you’re dream is being a race car driver, getting behind that steering wheel and driving that car. I never dreamed about putting on a suit, sitting on TV and running my mouth. I never dreamed about doing anything else. When that dream comes to an end you have to take a step back and say ‘oh my gosh what am I going to do.’”

He added, “What the TV thing allows me to do, and Dale Jarrett and I have talked about this, what it allows us to do, is go to the racetrack, see all of our friends, hang out with the people we always hung out with, talk to the people we always talked to, we just don’t get to drive the car. You get to do everything else but drive the car. That’s the price you pay for getting old I guess, but at the same time it’s still enjoyable to go.”

Petty stopped racing in 2008. He said he didn’t officially retire he “just went away. I ran my last race, put my helmet in a bag and left. That was the way it was. Sometimes that’s the best way to go.”

“I can’t say I officially retired, I just changed jobs,” he added.

He said he had driven 30 years and had planned on retiring in 2001 or 2002 when his son Adam came up through NASCAR. Then Adam Petty died on the racetrack in 2000. He continued racing, noting he stayed five to six years longer than he planned.

“This is the kind of sport that once you make up your mind that you need to be somewhere else, then that means you need to be somewhere else. It’s not something you play with. It’s a serious business as we know people get hurt and people get killed in this sport,” Petty said.

In 2008 he was 48 years old and it was time to do something else, he added.

STAGE RACING

As for NASCAR today and the stages format for each race, Petty said NASCAR makes tweaks each year, like the aero package. “But the rule change for the stage racing, that was a big change. That was not just a tweak. [The stage racing] totally changed the concept of how we can race and how drivers had raced since the very beginning of NASCAR back in the late ‘40s. You ran a whole race now you’re running segment races. That was a huge change.”

He said he thinks a lot of fans pushed back on the idea, until they saw it on the track. “Now a lot more fans have bought into and I think they are more open to what’s going on there.”

For NASCAR in general, Petty said, “The sport has struggled the last few years … from an attendance standpoint and a ratings standpoint but I think it’s hit bottom. Hopefully, we’ll see some growth in the sport.”

He said NASCAR is seeing some of the older drivers retire — Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards in the past few years and Dale Earnhardt Jr. announcing his retirement at the end of this season.

“But we’re seeing some young drivers, like Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney and some of those guys who are coming into the sport and that’s going to be good for the sport long term,” Petty said.

Petty said there’s no way to predict a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion at this time especially with chase format when it goes from 16 to 12 to 8 and then four and then at Homestead Motor Speedway it’s a winner takes all.

Petty said, “It’s like drawing high card from a deck of cards. You never know who’s going to draw that ace. I think you’re going to see the usual suspects, Jimmie Johnson, Joey Lagono, Kevin Harvick, the same guys we’ve seen over the last three or four years, but who that it is [to take the checkered flag] I have no idea.”

 
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