On October 9th, 1983, NASCAR changed forever. “The King” Richard Petty, three Victory Lane visits away from win number 200, sat fourth in the championship points standings, prepping himself and his STP Pontiac at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Petty Enterprises had two cars entered for the 1983 Miller High Life 500. One was for Richard Petty, and the other #7 belonged to his son, Kyle. Some would even suggest the seven-time champ’s glory days were well behind him by this point, and it was time for his boy to shine. But when the dust settled at NASCAR’s spiritual Home Track that day, The King emerged victorious. But there was a major problem post-race (or two). Petty’s car carried secrets that were straight out of a trickster’s handbook.
Richard Petty’s risky move that paid off… almost
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Now, it’s no secret that you could get away with things back then, that probably wouldn’t slip by tech these days. Cheating, rule-bending, hacking the game—call it what you may. The pioneers had more than a few tricks up their sleeves, back when stock car racing was just that in the truest sense of the term. Richard Petty had just changed manufacturers from Buick to Pontiac for his family race team. Unfortunately, that had resulted in him going winless for the first time in two decades.
But with the onset of the 1983 season, things looked positive once again. He kicked off his three-win season at Rockingham, following that up with another triumph at Talladega. Between then and November 9th, Petty scored four top-5 finishes and eight top-10s. Heading to Charlotte with just four races left to wrap up the championship, The King sat fourth in the drivers’ standings, trailing points leader Bobby Allison, followed by Darrell Waltrip, and Bill Elliott, in that exact order.
Maybe Petty Enterprises saw it as their chance to make 8x championship-winning history because the Pontiac they brought to Charlotte had some dirty secrets. It’s almost shocking the #43 passed pre-race inspection that day because, upon teardown, his winning engine was nearly 24 cubic inches off NASCAR’s stipulated size limit. It looked like King Richard wanted more horsepower for his championship bid. And that’s what his brother, Maurice Petty, the only engineer inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, gave him. But that wouldn’t be all. One NASCAR official noticed something wrong with the #43 car’s tires on Victory Lane. The codes did not seem to add up on the right side, and on closer inspection, it became clear. When he crossed the finish line, Richard Petty had four left tires on his Pontiac. Left-hand-side tires are softer than right-side tires, hence, more grip.
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LAS VEGAS, NV – MARCH 03: Former driver Richard Petty in pit row during practice for the NASCAR, Motorsport, USA Craftsman Truck Series Victoria s Voice Foundation 200 race on March 3, 2023, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, NV. Photo by Will Lester/Icon Sportswire AUTO: MAR 03 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Victoria s Voice Foundation 200 Icon230303232
But now, NASCAR was in a tough spot. The race-winning car sat in the garage with a glaringly illegal 381.983 cubic-inch engine and a set of four left-side tires—an obvious violation of the rulebook. After nearly four hours of deliberation, NASCAR’s Director of Operations, Bill Gazaway, announced that Richard Petty would receive a fine of $35,000 for his infractions. He would lose 104 championship points, which placed him exactly where he was before the race—behind Bill Elliott.
However, the sport allowed Richard Petty to keep the win on his record. We saw something like this happen most recently at the Richmond fall race when Austin Dillon spun out Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin from the lead to charge on through for his season’s first win. NASCAR revoked Dillon’s Playoff eligibility and took away 25 drivers and owner points from himself and Richard Childress Racing. But for Richard Petty and his team, things turned out much worse. That penalty was a massive financial blow for Petty Enterprises, and at the end of that season, The King departed from his family organization. They downsized to a one-car operation to push his son, Kyle Petty, with all their dedicated resources, but even he would leave after registering his worst-ever end-of-year finish yet in 1984.
The entire ordeal in Charlotte signaled the collapse of Petty Enterprises. But it leaves every true stock car racing fan wondering: how did they even pull off such a move from under the vigilant eyes of NASCAR? And why didn’t NASCAR hand the second-place finisher the win if the violations were grave enough for total disqualification?
The mystery of Darrell Waltrip’s missing car
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Darrell Waltrip, Petty’s rival, was fuming. He later told the press that Richard Petty’s half-hearted punishment felt like “a total contradiction of two of the most flagrant violations there are.” He maintained he wasn’t “mad at Richard Petty. But I think somebody has failed to do their jobs.”
He and Junior Johnson referenced an earlier incident from that year at Martinsville, where Tim Richmond was coasting on four left-side tires. When NASCAR found out, they fined Richmond five laps. By that ruling, “That’s enough that Petty can’t win the race,” argued Johnson, and Waltrip. But NASCAR countered saying Richmond was a case of caught in the act during the race, not after the checkered flag. So, the win stood officially in the record books for Richard Petty.
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Now. How did Petty Enterprises sneak that oversized engine through pre-race inspection to practice, qualifying, and ultimately, race day? According to Greg Fielden, author of Forty Years of Stock Car Racing (Vol. IV), “Maurice said he placed wax in the engine, wedging open valves on the eight cylinders to foil an air-pump test of the cylinders’ cubic inch displacement. When the race started, heat quickly melted the wax. The engine then produced increased speed and power from the over-sized cylinders.” Imagine pulling something like that off in today’s NASCAR with spec parts and single-source suppliers.
In the aftermath, the sanctioning body announced a new rule: any repeat of such an incident would result in a 12-week/3-race suspension. Everything considered, the sport is certainly better for it. But then again, rules only bound those who aren’t brave enough to test the limits in a sport as diverse as stock car racing.