King Time; Richard Petty

Richard "The King" Petty visited his Richard Petty Driving Experience at Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando, Fla., and later threw out the first pitch in Tampa Bay Devil Rays vs. Texas Rangers MLB game at Disney's comprehensive sports complex. One might say "The King" dropped by the Magic Kingdom.

If an achievement kingdom was ever bestowed upon those worthy, no modern person deserves a royal crown more than Richard Petty - NASCAR's most recognizable face and hat. "The King" doesn't have to tip his hat to be gracious as his courtesy is outward and sincere. It's a natural part of his person that he is willing to share. It seems the only thing Petty has been stingy with in the past is racing wins. And he doesn't hold back his cogent beliefs about racing and life.

The easiest way to get to know the man who can barely walk through a NASCAR garage without drawing a crowd is to roll along with his thoughts. Go with his explanations as he answers 11 questions about success, teams, momentum, focus, past and present along with his views on the essence of racing.

More than 1100 of Petty's words that follow are sure to elicit respectful feelings from fans. Take a smile or two with you as you go down Richard's magical road.

Dwight Drum asked Richard Petty:

You've had a lot of success. What's the best way to handle success?
"The success I had came a little at a time so it wasn't hard to accept it. I think some of the ball players or race car drivers, they're doing one thing one week and all of a sudden success comes to them instantly. It would be hard to take that way. I grew into it so I don't think it affected me quite as much as it would any other way."

Racing has ups and downs. Is it as difficult to retrieve momentum as it is to achieve it?
"I guess I look at it different ways. I think it is. The big deal is if you've ever been successful and know what successful is all about so you work that much harder at getting there. If you have never been successful you're working hard to get to it, but you don't know what it is. So I think it makes you work that much harder on the second trip around because you enjoyed being at the top so much that you're going to do that little bit extra to get back to it."

Is winning for you such that it can't be any other way?
"I guess it came from my early years. If you're going to play, play harder than anybody else so you get the most out of it. I think it's just instilled in the really, really good ball players or race car drivers that on whatever business they go in, they put in a little bit extra that the other guys think they're putting in it, but they're not. I look at a lot of it as just sort of fate. You had everything not give to you, but you had all the opportunities. The good ones take that opportunity and make something out of it."

What makes a good team tick or click?
"Everything we do is people on people. The deal of having a good team is a lot of times you've got good teams but maybe not got the good players that another team's got. You get that coordination, friendship, you got that 'want-to' as a group. Nobody's trying to be an individual. That's what makes a good team. A team cannot have individuals. It has to be a team. It always needs a leader but a leader can't be overbearing to the rest of the team in order for it to work."

Focus is so important in racing. Did you bring that with you or acquire it at the track?
"I think I was taught focus from the time I was small. In other words my dad always said, 'Anything worth doing is worth doing right.' So that was your focus. He said,' It's going to take three times as long to redo it because you've got to tear it down and start again.' Just put our focus on what we're going to do and do everything we can to get to that focus."

Can you compare the present challenges of driving to past challenges?
"Not really because I'm not driving now. You know what I mean. From what I can see it's a different society than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. People come to a racing deal from a different way. You got kids that come in here now that start when they're 20, 21-years-old. They already got 15 years experience cause they started when they were five or six-years-old.

"The group that we came through with didn't really get started until they were 18 or 20-years-old. Then they had to work four or five years in order to get a front-line race car to run in the Cup series. Now these guys, they're signing them up at 16 or 17-years-old and letting them do some practicing in other deals so that when they're 18 to 20 years old they'll be able to come to Cup. All that stuff's changed."

Do drivers ever stop learning do you think?
"No. I don't think so. I think the best driver I ever was, was the last race I run. I think the best ball players the last game they ever play they know more about what's going on than they ever have. A lot of times you know too much. Because you think too much about the things you are going to do or have done. That takes your focus away from just doing nothing but by reflexes."

I've been fortunate enough to ride along with the Richard Petty Driving Experience program. What does RPDE mean to you?
"I think it's a deal that the fans can get to experience what the drivers have to go through on the racetrack. Everybody sits in the grandstand thinks they can drive a race car. OK. And they'll say, 'Why doesn't that guy get out the way or he's getting lapped every 10 laps. You know, I could run that fast.'

"You put them in one of these cars and put them on a racetrack and after they run six or eight laps they come in and say, 'Oooh, this ain't as easy as it looks.' It's a lot of fun and most of them enjoy it.

"How would they like to be out there for three and half hours at temperatures of 130 degrees inside the car with no timeouts with 42 other cars? They're just out there with one or two. So it gives them a lot more respect for anybody that does get in a race car."

Drivers have a lot of differences. Do you know what drove you to win and go to the top?
"You know, I don't. I just know since my dad started racing I've been around it since I was 11 years-old. It's like a farmer's son becoming a farmer. I didn't know any better. I seen him win races and win championships. So to me that's the way you're supposed to do it. You play the game to win it. We done everything we could to win. I guess I never looked at anything extra that was just my inner deal saying, OK if you're going to do it, do the best you can with it."

Do you believe NASCAR drivers handle stress and pressure better than the average person?
"Oh yeah, definitely because they go through that. Any of the drivers, even the guys that's not won have been up and down. They've had good days and bad days. I don't know that your emotions would change any quicker in any other sport than what race car drivers do. Because you can be out there leading a race and have the race won and somebody wrecks in front of you or somebody throws oil and you spin out or you have a flat tire, stuff like that. You go from the very height that you can do to the very depth you can in an instant. That's the way the game is played. I don't think anybody has emotions that can change any quicker than what race car drivers do."

Is motorsports more a mental or a physical sport?
"It's probably more mental now than it ever was. When we used to run these cars they didn't really handle that good. Of course some of them say they don't handle now, but they didn't handle good. We didn't have good tires. They didn't have power steering. All that kind of stuff. They didn't have a lot of safety features. The cars are a lot easier to drive. They may not be what the driver wants. So now I think it's mental. Even when it's a physical game then you really have to use your mental deal to save yourself so that you don't use your physical stuff up. The mental deal not just from the driver standpoint, but from the crew chiefs and all that, they're setting up figuring what they need to do to make their car a little bit better. Do they make a pit stop now or do they wait two laps and let everybody else make theirs. It's just a big chess game and if you make the right decisions, you win."

Do champions have common traits and abilities and if so could you identify a few?
"Champions are all winners, OK. I think a lot of times I'm a big believer in fate. Fate puts you in the right place in the right circumstances and the good Lord gives you the ability. The good ones take that all together and they become champions."