DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050819

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   80 lines

AFTER 500TH START, KYLE PETTY LOOKS BACK . . . AND FORWARD

No other news conference on the NASCAR Winston Cup series this year was based on a flimsier premise than the one Saturday at Phoenix International Raceway.

The occasion was Kyle Petty's 500th start. It was not Petty's 500th consecutive start, just his 500th start. Bill Elliott's 500th start came and went this year with hardly a thought. Such stuff is not really news. It's one paragraph in a notebook, even if Kyle is a member of the first family of NASCAR.

Petty, however, took the opportunity to talk not so much about his 500th start, but where stock-car racing is today, how the Petty family fits into the big picture and what he sees in the Petty future.

King Richard Petty, his white teeth gleaming behind a broad smile, sat next to his son and listened in rapt attention along with the rest of us, content that his own legacy rested on sturdy shoulders.

``I think about things this way,'' Kyle said. ``This is a young sport, a real young sport. We're at a unique place in the sport where you can stand and look back and still see the beginning. Some sports go so far back that it's hard for a modern-day player to relate what it was like for a guy to play baseball, say, in 1912.''

The way Petty sees it, NASCAR is on the same time line as baseball was in about 1912. Organized ball started in the 1870s, but didn't explode into the American consciousness and became the ``national pastime'' until after 1900.

``It's not that hard for a race-car driver to look back and see some of the stuff that went on in the sport in the beginning and relate back to it,'' he said. ``There's Lee Petty, there's Junior Johnson - guys that were there at the very beginning.''

Petty noted wryly that his grandfather, resting in retirement in the family home next to Petty Enterprises in Level Cross, N.C., probably wouldn't have much to say about it. Lee Petty likes his privacy.

Nonetheless, ``I think it's important to keep that part of the sport alive,'' Petty said. ``As fast as it's growing, to be in touch with where the sport came from is important. I think growing up with the Petty family helps me. They're celebrating NASCAR's 50th anniversary next year and ever since they've had NASCAR races, they've had a Petty racing a NASCAR car.

``We're pretty much linked to where the sport has been and where the sport is going,'' Kyle continued. ``I've got a son (Adam) who is 17 and is . . . running some Late Model stuff. He might latch on and go for another 30 or 40 years. It won't be unheard of for the sport to have been around 60 or 70 years and have a Petty in each one.''

Kyle thought back to the start of his own career as an 18-year-old in 1979, when he jumped right into a Winston Cup car with little racing experience. He struggled through the early '80s driving for Petty Enterprises and finally bolted to one of the other great founding families of NASCAR, the Wood Brothers, with whom he won his first race in 1986.

``We can pretty much say that was a failed experiment from the very beginning,'' he said. ``You shouldn't start someone out in Winston Cup racing. I couldn't bring a 17-year-old into this position with no experience. For Adam, the way the sport has changed, it's not even close to being the way to go.''

Drivers coming into the sport today, such as Jeff Gordon and Kenny Irwin, are coming into NASCAR ``with seven or eight years of racing experience, running 30 or 40 races a year,'' Petty said. ``That's a ton of experience. I was 18 coming into a sport with no experience, and it took me 10 years to get the same amount of experience they had.''

Having started as early as he did, Petty is finishing his 18th season, although he's still relatively young at 37. The driver of the No. 44 Hot Wheels Pontiac said he has at least 10 more good years.

``I look at Mark Martin, Dale Jarrett, guys that are winning races other than Jeff (Gordon), and they're all older than I am,'' Petty said. ``It's not like I've aged out already. It's not like it's time for me to stop and do something else. Granddaddy didn't start driving until he was 35. I think that's way, way down the road for me.

``One day I might show up at the race track and ride off on my motorcycle, and that will be the last time y'all will hear from me. That will be the end of it. It will be Kyle Petty's farewell tour out the tunnel and down the highway.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Kyle Petty, who made his 500th Winston Cup start on Sunday, says

it's important for the sport to keep in touch its roots.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu