Richard Petty won seven Cup titles, and throughout it all, he always put pressure on drivers he needed to pass on the road to victory lane. Turns out the King wasn’t much different off track.

His son, Kyle Petty, recently talked about King Richard’s characteristics while driving a road car on an episode of his podcast, Country Count Down.

Kyle Petty was pointed to a statistic that 50 percent of fathers regularly shout at other drivers. When asked if King Richard fit within that 50 percent, Kyle replied, “He really didn’t have to say anything. He kind of let the car do the talking. I mean. I can’t tell you how many people he’s run three inches from their bumper, just daring them to slow up because he was gonna send him out through the median somewhere."

He further joked about his father and said, “He would pull up the side of him and just let his car drift left, left, left until they slowed down and he had the lane. So it was like he didn’t have to speak; he didn’t have to say anything. He just let the car do the talking.”

The co-host joked, envisioning a couple driving down the Interstate with the wife telling her husband that they are being driven off the road by the great Richard Petty.

While the jokes were made, Petty was a nightmare for any driver looking through their rear-view mirrors. Once he was behind you, the only way to shake him off was for him to pass through to take track position. 

But incidentally, there is another layer to this joke about Petty driving on the Interstate: an incident reached the courts. 

Petty Gets Brake-Tested by Civilian

Beyond his title-winning pedigree, Richard Petty was also a Republican, and he put his name forward in 1996 to become the North Carolina Secretary of State. He lost out to the Democratic incumbent Elaine Marshall, polling at 45 percent. 

In the same year, Petty reached where he admitted to breaking a traffic law when he followed very close behind a speeding car. The same skill that helped him get over 200 race wins. 

Petty admitted to tailgating a 1996 Mazda in his 1996 Dodge truck on his drive home from the Charlotte Motor Speedway on September 11th. The two vehicles bumped after the Mazda driver hit the brakes as both cars were going at 70 in a 65-mph speed limit. 

Petty’s admission ended with him paying $65 after the cost of damages was estimated at $25. But the racer in Petty ensured that he blamed the Mazda driver for slamming on the brakes for the two cars to collide. 

Petty was quoted as saying, “I think he got a little aggravated because I kept running up on the back of him. This was a situation that would have come up with anybody at any time. Instead of shooting at each other or throwing rocks at each other, he retaliated by putting on the brakes. Now, if it had been a NASCAR showdown, he would have been over in the ditch somewhere.”

The arguments from the Mazda driver were that Petty’s truck banged into his rear bumper four times, while Petty claimed there was a singular bump.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Ankita Yadav