February 23, 1986. The date is special for Kyle Petty, for it was the day he secured his first NASCAR Cup Series victory at Richmond Raceway, after years of waiting. Any driver would have been ecstatic. So was Petty. But there was a little void in his heart, too.
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It had something to do with a game of pool. “They used to play pool. We all could have gotten in trouble, probably. So, if you go back to that time, Bill Elliott was winning all the races,” Petty told Luken Glover from Fronstretch last year.
“So instead of picking a car to win, all the teams that played in the pool took their own car. We drew a number out of a hat, and whoever finished third won the pool, whatever car finished fifth won the pool,” he narrated.
Team Petty had picked fifth that day and were running fifth toward the end of the race at Richmond. They would have made a lot of money had they stayed in that position. But fate had other plans.
Dale Earnhardt, who was running in second place, hit the right rear of Darrell Waltrip, wrecking them both on Lap 397. Joe Bodine and Ruttman followed suit, and in the nick of a second, Petty was leading the race.
His crew chief, Eddie Wood, came on the radio at the time and shouted, “I think we’re leading! I think we’re going to win this thing!” And win, he did.
Driving the No. 77 Ford, Petty cruised past the finish line to take the first of his eight Cup Series wins. More than three decades later, it is the glory that stands tall and not the money lost.
“Who would have ever envisioned me winning on a short track? It was like throwing me in the ocean and telling me to get back to the shore,” Petty said.
Most of his 169 career starts till that point had come on intermediates and superspeedways. He would have been immensely satisfied with a fifth-place finish in Richmond. Winning there was a gift he never dreamed of. Petty then explained how he had not been given a trophy for the achievement. Winning a race at Richmond in 1986 got drivers a plaque instead.
“When you won Richmond in 1986, they gave you a plaque; it’s not a trophy. It’s a cut-out of the state of Virginia that hangs on the wall. I said it so much that a couple of years ago, they gave me a base for mine so that I could display it like a trophy,” added Petty, who doesn’t dwell on the lost pool winnings, the chaos that handed him the lead, or even the modest plaque that served as his “trophy.”
What endures is the improbability of what transpired on that February afternoon in Richmond and the little bit of luck that aligned to give him his first Cup Series victory. It wasn’t the race he expected to win, nor the track anyone would have picked for him to reach Victory Lane.
