There were race winners, there were champions and then there was Richard Petty. The ‘King’ as he has been nicknamed, won 7 Cup Series championships in a time when NASCAR was still a growing sport. Standing out from these 7 times that he set himself above the grid was the racing season of 1967. The year marked his second time being champion and also the time when he said out loud to the racing world that he was going to dominate it like none before him.
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Winning 27 of the 48 races that he started, Richard Petty set a new benchmark from behind the wheel of his #43 blue Plymouth Belvedere. He also won 10 races in a row during this season and blew up the pages of history. One of the crucial people behind Petty’s expertise in the 1967 season and his career as a whole was Dale Inman, his cousin and crew chief.
He said of the 7-week stretch during which the 10 consecutive victories were scored, “The remarkable thing was we had the same car all along. To keep the car under him for 10 races in a row and win them, I thought that was a feat.” Every racing fan knows that the number of overall and consecutive wins that the driver-chief duo set that year will defeat time just like it has done for the last 56 years.
A completely astounding fact that puts 1967 into perspective is the fact that Petty won more races that year than 14 different Hall of Famers, including Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Bobby Labonte, won over their entire NASCAR Cup careers. By winning 27 races, he set a victory percentage of 56.25. Translated to today’s racing language, a driver must win 20 races to match it. Since 1972, no NASCAR driver has won more than 13 races in a season.
So, safe to say that Petty’s 1967 records are beyond reach for today’s grid.
The importance of the 1967 NASCAR season in Richard Petty’s career
Talking about their feats, Inman said that their competitors would beat themselves up over how they managed to win races even though they didn’t have the best car on the grid. He added, “I enjoyed the 10 in a row. I don’t think that will ever be beat.”
“I don’t think the 200 wins will, either.”
Interestingly, Richard Petty did not even have to sweat it out to put these numbers up on the board. He usually won races laps ahead of the driver chasing him and the closest margin of victory through the season was 6 seconds. He also bested the 55-win record of his father Lee Petty over the year.
The season played a big role in him reaching his 200 wins and rendered him to be a true ‘King’ of NASCAR.
