Life on the Edge: A NASCAR Wife’s Race-Day Ritual
/At Talladega Superspeedway, Pattie Petty lives every lap with her husband, NASCAR driver Kyle Petty—balancing nerves, hope, and a wife’s instinct for danger.
By Michelle Garland, Star Sports Writer
Originally published in The Anniston Star, May 4, 1992
TALLADEGA – Perched high atop a motor home directly behind the drivers’ garage, she’s busy chatting with friends and mingling with sponsors.
But she never loses sight of the electric green and yellow car marked with a No. 42 zooming past her at blurry speeds of more than 190 miles per hour.
After all, that’s how she keeps an eye on her husband, Kyle Petty.
Though the distance between them seems like miles Sunday, Pattie Petty may as well be sitting in the passenger’s seat of her husband’s race car.
Her eyes never leave him as he rounds Turn 4. She cautiously and deliberately presses her foot down on an imaginary gas pedal, pushing him around the high-banked curve.
She’s his biggest fan and worst critic. She throws her hands in the air and screams. “What are you doing?” Then she rolls her eyes and comments with a giggle to a friend, “I can’t believe it. He just missed his pit.”
She turns in sync with the car as he makes his way through the trioval to begin another lap, all the while carefully listening to her husband’s every word via a radio she grips tightly in her left hand.
Her other hand fidgets with the radio’s earpiece or one of the many gold chains around her neck. At times she readjusts her belt and repeatedly looks at her watch. Every time Kyle inches past another car, her fist is clenched and her entire body tenses.
The movement is constantly in rhythm with her husband’s journey here around Talladega Superspeedway’s trioval in the Winston 500 and repeats itself throughout each of the 188 laps.
She has missed less than two handfuls of his races throughout their 14-year marriage, but her veteran status doesn’t help in calming her nerves.
“I look like I’m really busy,” Pattie says. “But I can promise you I haven’t missed a thing. If you ever see a race car driver’s wife sitting on her rear end doing nothing during a race, she’s on Valium.”
Though her actions may seem chaotic and countless, they are commonplace for this—a good, but relatively uneventful afternoon for Kyle Petty. He ended the day with a 10th-place finish, his most successful performance this season.
NASCAR Crashes and a Wife’s Worst Fears
In 1991, however, her actions here were much more dramatic.
She watched her husband’s car as it was sandwiched between two others, sending him in an upward lop before the race was 70 laps old. Kyle suffered a compound fracture in his leg in the wreck, sidelining him for the rest of the summer.
It’s times like those, Pattie says, when it’s difficult to ignore that each day at the office for her husband is life-threatening.
“You’re always anxious – every Sunday when he gets behind that wheel,” she says.
But for the Pettys, racing is what provides financial security for them and their three children – Adam (11 years old), Austin (10) and Montgomery Lee (6).
“This is his job,” Pattie says. “It’s our livelihood. It’s no different than a wife who sends her husband on a week-long sales job. You want him to be successful and prosperous, but you want him to eventually come home.
“When a wreck happens on the track, that’s when you lose your objectivity of it just being a job. I try to be strong for him, and I try to be calm. But when there is a wreck, that’s when I lose it.”
NASCAR Driver’s Wife Battles Fears
Immediately after the wreck in 1991, her knowledge of the sport told her he was in a dangerous situation. But it was a gut instinct that triggered her anxiety.
“It’s like a sixth sense,” Pattie explains. “I saw it coming. It was like watching it all happen in slow motion.
“I had contact with him on the radio. But then I lost contact, and it took my breath away.”
Pattie climbed down from the top of the motor home and battled her way through knee-deep mud in what she describes as a dreamlike state, making her way to the infield care center.
“It was 20 minutes before I knew anything,” she says. “I immediately began to pray that he was all right. The first load of drivers came back and Terry Labonte came over to me and said, ‘He’s alive… but it’s bad. It’s his leg.’
“Then I went over to Dale Jarrett and said ‘Tell me how bad it is.’ All he said was, ‘He’s conscious.’
She tried desperately to rationally evaluate the emotional whirlwind that enveloped her.
“In my mind, I told myself to be thankful it was his leg and not his head,” she says. “So I could take a breath of air. But nobody bothered to tell me that’s the worst break a driver can have.”
The emotional trauma a Pattie Petty feels is not isolated. She experiences the same fears every time she hears the deafening sound of a crash, even if her own husband is not involved.
Behind the Scenes with NASCAR Wives at the Track
“The wives have to stick together,” she says, placing an arm around the shoulder of her friend, Kathy Bodine, “because we know what each other is feeling.”
Kathy has watched her husband, Geoff Bodine, race for the 20 years they’ve been married.
“When there is a crash, the first thing that goes through my mind is, number one, please let him be all right,” Kathy says. “Number two, I think, ‘Where the hell is Pattie?’
“We need each other because we’re the only ones who can completely understand what we are feeling. When Kyle crashes, tears come to my eyes because I know how Pattie feels.”
With that, Pattie interjects.
“With that much,” she says, placing her thumb and pointer finger an inch apart, “it could have been yours.”
Relief at the Finish Line: Surviving Dangerous NASCAR Races
But the excitement is also contagious. And so is the comforting feeling each time a race ends without disaster.
“I want Geoff to win because it makes him happy,” Kathy says. “And nothing is more fun than to be at Victory Lane. But when he wins it’s not for me, it’s for him. I honestly don’t care where he finishes.
“When each race is over, it’s just a relief that he is still in one piece.
Michelle Garland Segrest, a graduate of Auburn University, is an award winning sports reporter who has been working as a journalist since 1989. During her career, Michelle has reported about everything from sports to courts, lifestyles to business, politics to pastries, and technical to travel.
Where are Kyle and Pattie Petty now?
Pattie Petty, formerly married to NASCAR driver Kyle Petty, is no longer actively involved with the Victory Junction camp, an organization she helped establish. After being removed from day-to-day operations, she now serves as chairwoman emeritus on the board. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2011 and was reportedly dealing with the disease at that time.
Kyle Petty is an American former stock car racing driver and current racing commentator. He is the son of racer Richard Petty, grandson of racer Lee Petty, and father of racer Adam Petty, who was killed in a crash during practice in May 2000. Petty last drove the No. 45 Dodge Charger for Petty Enterprises, where he was CEO; his last race was in 2008.
