"It was a beautiful day here in New York. It was unbelievable. It was so great I pretended I was an immigrant and took the day off."
--David Letterman 

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Coca-Cola And Kyle Petty Unveil Special MyCokeRewards No. 45 Dodge For Coca-Cola 600 - Actual Pieces of Car and Driver Uniform to Be Available in MyCokeRewards Prize Program: Not only will Kyle Petty run a special MyCokeRewards-themed car in the Coca-Cola 600, but some lucky fans will have a chance earn pieces of the No. 45 Petty Enterprises Dodge, and a piece of Coca-Cola 600 history, as part of the $50 million MyCokeRewards prize package. ...While MyCokeRewards prizes range from trips to the NCAA Final Four to a behind-the-scenes look at American Idol, the latest additions to the program are sure to interest NASCAR aficionados everywhere. By collecting MyCokeRewards points, fans of the Coca-Cola 600 will have the chance to obtain hundreds of unique NASCAR-themed prizes, including the hood, deck lid and side panels from Petty’s No. 45 MyCokeRewards Dodge. Other rewards include Petty’s helmet, driver’s uniform, shoes, and gloves, as well race-worn crew uniforms and other NASCAR-themed collectibles.

Whupped!


At the neighborhood social center in Mooresville this week I overheard some of NASCAR's often-praised "boys back at the shop" in deep discussion.

Okay, okay, so the social center really is a bar and grill.

Anyway, these engine-builders and chassis specialists and welders had just gotten off work at some of the local Nextel Cup Series operations and they were hoisting a few brews and discussing what a heavy work load the current stretch of races means for them.

Starting with the Subway 500 on April 22 at Phoenix there are 14 major events in as many weeks.  There isn't another break until the weekend of July 30.

"Lordy, trying to keep up is going to put a whipping on us," lamented one of the young fellows.

I cackled out loud.

The group at the adjoining table gave me a cold stare that essentially hissed, "What's so funny, old man!?"

I said, "Lads, I'm not laughing at you.  But the mention of whippings reminded me of a column I wrote 25 years ago, well before many of you were born.  It dealt with whippings, or punishment, that some of NASCAR's top stars of that era experienced when they were boys.  I still get a chuckle out of their stories."

The "boys back at the shop" asked me to share some of the tales.  I did so with them.  Now I will with you.     

Decades later, Buddy Baker remembered the incident down to the last detail.

"I was 10 or 11 and I was spending the summer with my grandfather, Harwell Hatchell, on his farm down in Florence County, S.C.  Me and a couple cousins caught a little ol' green snake and we'd been playing around with it.

"Well, late every afternoon, Grandpa would sit out in the front yard and whittle.  He was carving on something and I sneaked up behind him and threw that snake on his shoulder.

"My Grandpa was 6-8 and as tough a man as I've ever known.  But he was scared to death of snakes.  When he saw what was on him, he pitched a fit.  He really went into a rage.

"I started running.  He chased me for a bit, then gave up.  As I disappeared into a cornfield he yelled a promise that he would get me sooner or later.

"I was so scared that I waited until way after dark to go back to the house.  And even then I tip-toed to my room.  I eased into bed and pulled the covers up.

"That's when I heard this evil cackle that made my hair stand straight up.  I thought a monster had me.  A monster would have been better.  It was Grandpa.  He was sitting in that room in the dark waiting on me.  And he had his razor strop.

"Oh my!"

Ricky Rudd offered this anecdote:

"I'll tell you I got broke right quick from even thinking about playing hookey from school.  It happened when I was in second grade back in Norfolk.

"I hid in the garage until the school bus was gone.  Then I came out and said to my dad, Al, 'Well, no school for me today.  The bus left me.'  He tore my backside up with his belt."

The longtime driver/team owner James Hylton got his lashing from "switches" broken from trees.

"My Momma almost pruned a tree breaking off switches," said a grinning Hylton.

And just what had jaunty little Jimmy done?

"I threw the cat down the well," said Hylton. 

"After Momma got through switching me, Daddy put me on a rope and made me go down in the well and get the cat's body.  Then he made me clean the well.

"I never threw anything in there again."

The late Dale Earnhardt vividly remembered what he called "the worst fannin' my little fanny ever got."

Said Dale:

"I got whipped for stealing my own marbles.  I swear it's true.

"See, me and my best boyhood friend, Roger Bostic, who lived right down the street from us in Kannapolis, had been shooting marbles.  We got mad over something, and Roger went home, taking all the marbles--mine and his.

"When I'd go down to his house to get mine, Roger would run inside and lock the door.  I'd scream and scream and threaten, and he'd just laugh out the window.  He really ticked me off.

"Finally, I saw Roger and his mother leave.  I went down there, went to his room--remember, this was back in the good ol' days when you could leave a house unlocked--and got my marbles.  I didn't think nothing was wrong about going in their house.  Me and Roger spent nights with each other all the time.  It was almost like my house.

"Roger told his mother what I'd done and she called and told my Daddy (the late hall of fame driver, Ralph Earnhardt).  Daddy misunderstood and thought I had gone in the house to get Roger's marbles.  I thought Daddy was going to kill me."

Bobby Allison got whipped with a garden hose.

"I sassed my Dad at the wrong time," said Bobby with an impish grin.  "He showed me there wasn't a right time for that."

Richard Petty's all-time No. 1 spanking came for getting into a rock fight with his brother Maurice, later the Petty team's chief engine-builder.

"Every time it rained in Level Cross it seemed to uncover rocks in our yard," recalled King Richard.  "We had this chore of moving the rocks to the driveway.  Without fail, we'd get to arguing and wound up throwing the rocks at each other.  One particular time we hit each other in the head and Momma let us have it.

"After she got through our heads felt wonderful compared to our backsides."

And how about Richard's son Kyle?

"My Grandpa (the late hall of famer, Lee Petty) had poured some concrete at his shop," recalled Kyle.  "After admiring his work for awhile, he went inside.  As soon as he got out of sight I ran the dogs through the wet concrete.  Then I rode my bike through it."

Who whipped Kyle?

"Grandpa and Daddy took turns."

Driver Kyle Busch Turns 21 Amid Scrutiny
By JENNA FRYER
AP Motorsports Writer

 
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- If the NASCAR community had one universal wish for Kyle Busch on his 21st birthday, it probably would be for him to start behaving like an adult.

Busch, one of the youngest drivers in the Nextel Cup series, has been under constant criticism this season for reckless or immature behavior. He's twice tangled with series champion Tony Stewart, wrecked race leader Michel Jourdain Jr. in Mexico City, took the brunt of the blame for aggressive driving in Daytona and was ticketed for reckless driving in Richmond, Va.

Most recently, he gave Casey Mears a retaliatory bump under the red flag at Phoenix that earned him a five-lap penalty and a severe tongue-lashing from NASCAR president Mike Helton.

"The guy is really fast and he's got a lot of talent, but he really does a lot of stupid stuff - and that's across the board, that feeling throughout the garage," Mears said. "When he grows up, he's going to be a real good race car driver."
 
Busch's rivals eagerly await that day. He celebrated his 21st birthday on Tuesday and is rapidly closing in on a time when he won't be able to shrug off his errors as youthful mistakes.

For now, much of what he's done can be attributed to immaturity.

"You've got to remember how old he is," said four-time series champion Jeff Gordon, Busch's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports. "He's got pressure on him. He's got a tremendous amount of talent. He has a great team.

"I think a lot of times when you're young you're so under the microscope, everybody is coming down on you and the whole world is watching and it's hard for you to take all that in at times. It only makes it tougher for yourself."
 
It doesn't help that he's the kid brother of Kurt Busch, who had more than his share of missteps in his first four Nextel Cup seasons. During that time, Kurt Busch became one of the most disliked drivers in NASCAR - both in the garage and the grandstands.

It's possible that Kyle is paying the price for some of his brother's sins. He's been cut very little slack since graduating to the Cup series last season, and the criticism directed at him has seemed harsher than what's leveled at the rest of the young drivers.

"He's definitely guilty by association," Kurt Busch said. "But he's also young and an aggressive racer who likes to race hard. Mix it all up and it sometimes breeds the question: `Is he over the line or not?'"

Kyle Busch himself has wondered if he's not judged in a harsher light, if he'd maybe have a bit of a smoother ride if he wasn't one of the "Busch Brothers."

"I have that feeling sometimes, that it's difficult to show your differences between each other," Kyle Busch said. "It's very difficult to be in the news, and yet to try to be in the good news. What I've noticed here lately is that any little thing that is out of the ordinary, I get shamed on.

"It's very difficult to get the amount of respect that you wish you could get in the right way."

Those closest to Kyle Busch acknowledge he's not been perfect, and has brought a lot of the scrutiny onto himself. He has made foolish on-track mistakes, and Stewart twice had conversations with him that left the veteran frustrated and feeling as if he couldn't get through to him.

And Kyle Busch did himself no favors following his win in Phoenix last November when he angrily stormed out of his post-race news conference because he was being questioned about his brother's reckless driving arrest two nights earlier.

"Yes, that was immature of him," Kurt Busch said. "But if you look at it from his point of view, it was his moment to shine and he's sitting there being forced to talk about me. That's not fair to him, and it upset him."

Kyle Busch readily acknowledges he handled things incorrectly in Phoenix, and now knows that retaliating against Mears was wrong. But he insists it's going to take time for him to learn how to handle himself in volatile situations.

Based on his brother's success, he was snapped up very young and put on a lightning-fast career track. He was entered in his first NASCAR Truck Series race when he was 16, and was in the Busch Series by 18. It left little time for learning from life experiences or social situations with people his own age.

"The hardest part for me is probably my age," Kyle Busch said. "I'm so used to being able to win races and things like that at the local short track ranks. Now you've got so many tough competitors out there, that it's so difficult to win and get the respect you want to gain."

His supporters insist he is trying. And there may be hope for him - just six months after he was the most vilified driver in the sport, Kurt Busch has taken steps toward improving his image and his efforts have been recognized.

Now it's up to Kyle to do the same.

"I see a guy who really wants to do a good job," teammate Jimmie Johnson said. "A guy who really cares for Hendrick Motorsports and his sponsors and cares about the sport and wants to be the best driver out there.

"Things have happened that he has to look back at, but he's committed to this organization and to going fast and he's really trying hard to make the right adjustments to make life easier for himself off the race track."

1986 Miller High Life 400
By Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM


After getting caught up in a 10-car accident earlier in the 1986 Miller High Life 400 at Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway, fifth-place Kyle Petty was content just to stay on the lead lap and get a good finish.

June 21, 1959: "Tiger Tom" Pistone leads just one lap to beat Glen Wood and Buck Baker and claim the $900 first-place check. 

April 7, 1963: Virginia native Joe Weatherly wins for the third and final time at Richmond, leading 63 laps in front of 15,000 on the dirt half-mile. 

March 24, 1968: David Pearson beats Charlie Glotzbach by more than a lap to win the final dirt race at Richmond. The track is paved in time for the fall event. 

Feb. 23, 1975: Richard Petty's No. 43 Dodge dominates, beating second-place Lennie Pond by six laps for his ninth Richmond victory in a 10-race span. 

Feb. 21, 1988: Neil Bonnett edges Ricky Rudd by a second in the final race on the half-mile. The track will become a .75-mile D-shaped oval by the fall. 

Imagine his surprise when a full straightaway ahead, leaders Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt commenced to wrecking with four laps remaining.

When the smoke cleared, literally and figuratively, Petty went from fifth to first, capturing the first Cup victory of his seven-year career and ending a three-year winless drought for the Wood Brothers.

"We'd been in that earlier wreck and the car just didn't handle right all day," Petty said. "It was a fifth- or sixth-place car the way we were running until the leaders wrecked."

While Petty celebrated, Waltrip and Earnhardt pointed fingers and traded barbs over the Lap 397 incident that ended Waltrip's day and collected third-place Joe Ruttman and fourth-place Geoff Bodine.

Glued to Earnhardt's bumper for several laps, Waltrip's No. 11 got beside his rival's No. 3 in the backstretch and attempted to complete the pass heading into Turn 3. However, Earnhardt's left front and Waltrip's right rear touched, sending both Chevrolets hard into the wall.

"Going down the backstretch, I thought I was all the way past him," Waltrip said. "Then in the third turn, it felt like my car had run over a land mine.

"It snapped my neck, blurred my vision and for a moment there, I was somewhere else."

Earnhardt took the blame, but claimed it was "just one of them racing deals."

"At the end, I didn't do anything [Waltrip] wouldn't do," The Intimidator said. "It was racing.

"To be honest, I was trying to dive under him in the third turn and I didn't make it. I barely clipped him in the rear and spun us both. I hated to tear up both cars since we had been racing so hard. I know he was a little upset with me because he hit me as we came around the track afterward."

Ruttman and Bodine, following closely behind, had nowhere to go, spinning into the fray. As Ruttman attempted to get his No. 26 Buick pointed in the right direction, Petty flashed past.

"Even when I got through the wreck, I didn't see Ruttman's car sitting down there in the infield," Petty said. "I thought for a minute that he'd made it through, too, and that I was going to finish second."
 
Instead, it was Ruttman who was the runner-up, followed by Earnhardt, Bobby Allison and Waltrip, who rammed Earnhardt's car as the field rolled to the checkered flag under caution.

Kyle joined father Richard and grandfather Lee as Richmond winners. The Woods hadn't won since Buddy Baker's 1983 victory in the 400-miler at Daytona.

"When you win a race, you're marked down as a winner," Petty said. "I'm tickled to death. This builds confidence for the future."

Earnhardt had the best line to sum up the day's fortunes: "You win some, lose some and crash some."