Racing's no picnic without The King

Saturday, Jul. 04, 2009

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Richard Petty only drove the pace car Saturday night, and that's too bad.

If only he were still in his prime.

Because now more than ever, NASCAR desperately needs its aging King and greatest ambassador front and center every week. Stock-car racing longs for Petty's wraparound shades and wraparound smile to captivate a nation and save a sport that is spewing oil and leaking gas faster than a '78 Chrysler Cordoba.

In commemoration of his 200th and final victory here 25 years ago, Petty jumped into a replica of the car he drove to victory here in 1984. Except now he was driving a pace car before the start of a generic race named after a diet cola. And he was doing it in front of thousands upon thousands of empty seats at Daytona International Speedway.

Daytona never seemed deader than it did Saturday night — a distressing contrast to that magical day a quarter-century ago. Back then, NASCAR was almost literally hotter than a firecracker — the Firecracker 400 that Petty won with President Ronald Reagan at the track giving the command for the drivers to "start your engines!"

"We couldn't have had a better script if we'd wrote it ourselves," Petty remembers with his catfish-and-hushpuppies twang.

That milestone victory and the star-spangled circumstances surrounding it solidified Petty as not only the greatest driver in NASCAR history, but an authentic piece of American history. The blue and red No. 43 Pontiac he drove that day is owned by the Smithsonian and was put on display next to the desk where Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of 200 mph."

Petty's patriotism was the biggest story in NASCAR 25 summers ago. Now, in a troubling sign of the times, the most notable development from Daytona this week has been driver Jeremy Mayfield trying to legally force his way into this race despite the fact that he tested positive for methamphetamine. It used to be "smoking tires" was a part of the NASCAR vernacular; now it's "smoking meth."

"His (Mayfield's) teeth were never rotting out; his eyes were not sunken," Mayfield's attorney Bill Diehl said earlier this week when he argued that the result of Mayfield's positive drug test was flawed. "He never displayed any characteristics that are commonly seen by everyone among people who use meth."

As you can tell, this is no longer Petty's NASCAR. In 1984 in this Republican-dominated sport, the ultra-conservative Reagan became the first sitting president to ever attend a NASCAR race. Now, a liberal Democrat is in the White House, and Barack Obama will get a warmer welcome in Moscow next week than he would ever get at Daytona.

Twenty-five years ago, NASCAR was undergoing tremendous growing pains and on its way to becoming the boom sport of the 1990s. Now, it is undergoing enormous shrinking pains and is in jeopardy of losing its prominent place in the American sporting hierarchy.

All you had to do was look at the stands Saturday night to see the evidence. The 57,000 grandstand seats along the backstretch were closed completely. Other ticket prices were slashed.

Across the sport, ticket sales, merchandise sales and TV ratings are down more than 10 percent from last year. It doesn't help that the sport's most popular driver (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) is barely even a factor on the track anymore.

Certainly, all sports and businesses are struggling during this economic downturn, but you wonder if NASCAR will ever be back to what it once was. This is, after all, a sport entrenched in the 20th century and built upon this nation's love of powerful, gas-guzzling American cars.

That love is disappearing faster than Dodge dealerships. Both General Motors and Chrysler are in bankruptcy protection and pretty soon we'll all be driving hybrids or electrics. Can you really picture 200,000 fans flocking to Daytona to see Jeff Gordon red-lining his Toyota Prius at 68 mph and passing Kyle Busch's Honda Lithium-Ion Civic to win the Chek Cola 115?

In a better day and time, President Reagan stayed after the 1984 Firecracker 400 for a Fourth of July picnic and ate fried chicken with Petty. Country-singing legend Tammy Wynette joined them, stood between the two icons, and sang, "Stand By Your Man."

Today, NASCAR is no longer a picnic.

President Reagan is gone, the King is retired and there's no man for NASCAR to stand by.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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