Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993 TAG: 9303140059
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
C'MON, KYLE, GROW UP? NAH
The fan outcry over the Kyle Petty-Bobby Hillin dispute in the Daytona 500 has been only slightly less furious than the "blizzard of the century" that shut down Atlanta on Saturday morning."We've not seen anything like this in our lifetime," Georgia Gov. Zell Miller said as snow blew sideways and the large NASCAR family holed up in hotels scattered around this paralyzed city.
However, Miller just as easily could have been speaking of the fan reaction after the nationally televised shouting match between Petty and Hillin after they crashed late in 1993's first race.
We have reached the fourth race of the season, and the auto racing weeklies still are getting letters blasting or defending Petty.
Here's a sampling of salvos: "Just who does Petty think he is? . . . Biggest jerk of the race. . . . C'mon, Kyle, grow up. . . . You will never be the man your father was. . . . I thought I saw a jackass get out of the No. 42 car. . . . There's nothing mellow about him."
And these venomous missives don't even take into account the shouting match Petty had with his boss, Felix Sabates, after the Richmond race last weekend concerning the DWI-style performance of his rookie teammate, Kenny Wallace.
Petty wasn't the only one upset with Wallace, who was so bad he waited until the race was over to crash.
What Petty and the others didn't know is that Wallace was so out of it last Sunday that he was hallucinating. He inhaled smoke throughout the race and had to spend three hours in a hyperbolic chamber at a Richmond hospital last Sunday night to get the carbon monoxide out of his system.
"It's not a very good race to talk about," Wallace said Friday at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Ga. "We had a piece of wood inside the frame rail to hold weights in place. An exhaust pipe broke and the wood caught on fire. I was breathing smoke the whole race."
When the race was over, Wallace didn't recognize some of his crewmen. He spoke of a midrace interview with a radio broadcaster that never occurred. He was delirious.
"I should have got out of the car, but I guess I was too much of a racer to let go," Wallace said. "What a bad experience."
So Petty was out of line once again. Well, bless his ungentlemanly heart. If you want good manners, go to a debutante ball. This is stock car racing.
I was inclined to excoriate Petty's critics in this column. But they're just doing the same thing he was. Petty would be the first to say life is no fun if you can't get excited about something.
He was in good spirits Friday as he discussed his hair-trigger racing temper. He called himself "the Charles Barkley of racing."
"From 1979 to 1991," Petty said, "all I heard from the media was, `He's not serious.' And then all of a sudden in 1992 and 1993, after I get upset when I don't do good, everybody says, `He's going to have to calm down.'
"I'm always upset. Just about every race I run, when I get out of the car, I'm upset about something. I might run a race and be mad at six different people. But at the end of the race, I'm only mad at the last one."
The long races tend to fry Petty's nerves. Afterward, it usually takes his head as long to cool as his car. This is a driver who wants to win so badly that when he doesn't, his circuits go haywire.
And there we are, faithful scribes of the media, standing at his cockpit the moment he steps from his car after a race, greeting him with dumb opening lines like, "Came up a little short today, eh, Kyle?"
"If you take Michael Jordan, and he's playing basketball and gets shoved into the stands going after a ball, you don't see 16 guys from the media running out on the court saying, `Hey, Michael, how'd that Spalding taste?'
"But we get out of that car, and if something has happened, you guys are all right there," Petty said.
"How many times do you guys get in traffic and cuss someone out for cutting you off? People get upset! The only difference is when we get upset, we do it in front of a lot of people."
The marvelous thing about Kyle Petty is he wouldn't have it any other way.
"I don't want anyone to do anything different," he said. "I don't see anything wrong in going into your hauler and cooling off. But I don't see anything wrong with letting go of your frustrations. I think that by giving [drivers] a 15-minute cooling-off period, you'll sugarcoat the sport. And this sport doesn't need to be sugarcoated."
But don't you worry about your reputation? The answer was quick and forceful.
"No. I've had a reputation as a no-driver," he said. "I've had a reputation of not being serious. I've had a reputation of being on the verge. My reputation changes almost weekly, like my hair length. But I'm not a hot head."
Oh yes you are, Kyle. But do us a favor. Don't change.
\ AUTHOR Bob Zeller covers Winston Cup racing for this newspaper.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING