Richard Petty's take on the new Chase? Still adjusting
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – There's a reason he's called 'The King.'
Richard Petty is the only living NASCAR Sprint Cup driver with seven championships. The only other driver with seven is the late Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Petty won his seven titles – in 1964, '67, '71, '72, '74, '75 and '79 – under radically different systems that put heavy emphasis on finishing races with a high level of consistency vs. repeated victories. Petty, who retired from driving in 1992, never raced under anything close to a Chase format, and certainly never in an atmosphere like Sunday's winner-take-all scenario at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
"When I look back, when I won the championship I won it five different ways of counting, but it was still a year-long championship," Petty told Paste BN Sports on Saturday. "Then I was a little disturbed basically when they went to a 10-race deal (the first Chase in 2004).
"Then somebody won it, and it took us 48 races to win it. But, after a year or two, I look at him as a champion. It's going to be the same way with this. The guys that won it with 10 races are going to be a little jealous of the deal or saying it's not right or whatever. But after a year or two, it's set in stone."
Petty said the Chase format – and its 2014 reworking – have been good for the sport.
"From the PR standpoint, they couldn't have come with a better deal as far as making it big," he said. "It's been good for us, for the sponsors. It's put a lot of emphasis on racing.
"If it had been a 10-race deal this year, it wouldn't have been as exciting. If it had been an all-year deal, it would have been boring."
The first of the four Chase contenders – Denny Hamlin, Ryan Newman, Joey Logano and Kevin Harvick – to reach the finish line Sunday will win the Cup championship. That winner-take-all concept has been difficult for some in the garage area – and many fans – to accept.
"It's so different that it's kind of hard to like with just a one-race deal," Petty said. "We always ran all year long or 10 races. Now, all of a sudden you're saying it's just one race."
Petty, NASCAR's all-time Cup victory leader with 200, said the "showtime" nature of Sunday's finale wouldn't be a good fit for his approach to driving.
"I was never big on all-star races and short-race deals as far as the 'showtime' part of it goes," he said. "I was never into the show business part of it. I had a job to do, and that was to go run a race.
"For me, I think it probably would be as much as anything about your competition. If it was [David] Pearson, [Bobby] Allison and [Cale] Yarborough, it would be a heat race every lap. But, if it had been somebody else, then you would look at it differently."
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