K. Petty cashes in on team’s Winston Cup improvement

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 | 9:38 a.m.

The spring is back in Kyle Petty's step.

Petty, the third-generation NASCAR driver whose career admittedly had been in a tailspin for the past five years, is in the early stages of a long-term plan to turn his family's multi-car race team into a force to be reckoned with on the Winston Cup circuit.

Although the gains have been modest this season, the 41-year-old Petty clearly is enjoying the results of his labor at Petty Enterprises.

To punctuate how far the team has come in the first 11 races of the season, Petty's worst showing in his past eight races was a 23rd-place finish May 4 in Richmond, Va.; last season, that would have been cause for celebration.

After averaging a 31.1 finish in 24 races in 2001, Petty has an average finish of 21.8 this year, including a season-best 10th-place last month at Talladega Superspeedway.

"It has been a huge turnaround for our team -- for the Sprint team -- but it has been good for all of Petty Enterprises," Petty said during a corporate outing Monday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "We got really consistent running 20th to 30th, now we need to be running 15th to 25th -- and we're in that range right now.

"We've run almost a third of the season and we need to put ourselves in a position where every eight to ten races, we're able to step it up so by the end of the year we're pretty consistent between fifth and 15th -- that's what we're shooting for, anyhow."

Petty, the son of NASCAR legend Richard Petty, credits the team's turnaround to several different factors -- including having the benefit of time to deal with the death of his son, Adam, in a crash during practice for a Busch Series race two years ago at New Hampshire International Speedway.

"Part of the turnaround is the (new) engine department, part of it is some of the engineering that we did last year that really didn't help us much last year but we knew we would start to benefit from it this year," he said.

"Part of it is that and part of it is Robin Pemberton, who came over from (Rusty Wallace's team) to really take over some of the day-to-day management.

"And then we're a year further away, mentally, from when Adam's accident happened and I think time does change some of that. You're able to deal with it in some way that you probably couldn't deal with it last year; it was more up front and center most of the time last year. This year, I'm able to kind of deal with it better."

Richard Petty, NASCAR's all-time winningest driver with 200 career victories, said his son has been more focused as a driver this season.

"Last year, Kyle had a lot on his mind," the elder Petty said, referring to his grandson's death. "Even though it never leaves your mind, he gets more and more (engrossed) with something else so it don't hit him every minute.

"You never forget it; you just keep busy. I think he has done a really good job of overcoming that."

Kyle Petty, who has eight career Winston Cup wins but none since 1995, said it was during this year's Winston Cup race at LVMS when he got his first indication that the team was heading in the right direction.

"When we came out here, we qualified pretty good (11th) and ran really good in the race," he said. "We ran in the top eight or ten for the first half of the race and then we broke a gear.

"We still ended up 30th, so we were pretty pleased to have run as good as we did because that had been the first time we had been able to run in the top ten or fifteen in about two years. The finish didn't matter as much that time, but the run did."

But Petty is quick to point out that Petty Enterprises still has a ways to go before it is competing for race wins on a regular basis.

"We've still got a long way to go," he said. "We haven't turned the corner yet but we've got our turn signal on so people know we're getting ready to turn a corner.

"By no stretch of the imagination have we turned this thing around (completely) but we have slowed down our slide into oblivion -- and I think that's where we were headed. But we've made some changes and we're getting ready to make some moves.""