7/19/2009
By JOEL ASCHBRENNER/Salina Journal
Jeremy Petty was driving from Smolan to Salina to watch a friend play basketball when a driver ran a stop sign at the intersection of Smolan Road and Old Highway 81, hitting the 16-year-old's vehicle on the driver's side door.

The accident broke his left leg in five places, punctured and collapsed his right lung, partially tore his esophagus from his stomach and caused internal bleeding. He does not remember the accident, the 45 minutes it took to cut him out of his totaled 1947 Hudson pickup, or much of the two weeks he spent in the hospital.

Ten years later, the accident does not slow him down.

Petty, a Smolan native, is in 14th place in the ARCA/Remax series, a national stock car racing circuit, second only to NASCAR, driving the No. 23 car for Hixson Motorsports.

Even when racing stock cars at 200 miles per hour, Petty said he doesn't think about the accident that almost took his life. He said he feels safer on the race track than driving around town.

"If God wants to take me, he doesn't need a race car to do it," Petty said.

Hard work, long days

After missing the first race of the season in February, Petty joined Wayne Hixson's team. In April, Petty left Smolan with several of his own stock cars and equipment and moved to Hixson's headquarters in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., where he now lives in a corner apartment above the shop.

Petty's weeks consist of 12-hour days sanding and painting his car's body, adjusting the chassis and dropping in new motors before loading up his car and hauling it to the race track. This is not the norm for ARCA drivers.

He said almost 95 percent of the regular drivers in the circuit have teams of mechanics and crew members to prepare their cars, and only show up to the track and drive.

"I wouldn't be able to race if I did it that way," he said.

Hixson Racing has one full-time employee and two part-time employees who work in the shop for Petty and his teammate, Ron Cox.

"They're good guys; they work hard, but they're not specialized," Petty said. "If you have a million dollars or two million dollars to spend, you can hire one guy who just does tires and somebody else who just does shocks."

Petty's crew is made of volunteers. Several students from a high-performance motorsports program at the University of Northwestern Ohio, Jeremy's father, Joe, and family friend, Bryan Hickman, of Minneapolis, Kan., drive to every race to work the pits.

"It's a bunch of kids and a couple of old guys," Petty said. "They work hard every weekend, and they put a lot of hours in driving back and forth."

Old tires and used parts

Most of the regular drivers in the ARCA series have some kind of NASCAR affiliation. Some are development drivers for NASCAR teams, while others are part of entire teams fielded by NASCAR owners or receive NASCAR sponsorship.

Petty, however, drives his own cars and races without a major sponsor. Last week, he said, racing at Iowa cost him about $5,000, while many teams spend $50,000-$75,000 per race.

Each week Petty pieces a car together to be able to race.

"You don't look at my car and see brand new parts; you see used parts," Petty said. "I can't afford new parts. The team doesn't really have the budget for that. We just try to get the best used parts we can find."

While some teams buy four or six sets of tires for a single race, Petty has made it through nine races this season with only five sets of new tires. He often races on his own used tires, or used tires other teams give him.

Unlike many of the drivers on the ARCA circuit, the first time Petty sees a track is when he arrives for qualifying, the weekend of the race.

"Most all the top teams go test during the week," he said. "All the money we have is strictly spent on racing, so we don't test at all, and that's a big disadvantage."

When Petty isn't racing he is working one his two other jobs. He is the owner of Billet Racing Products, which makes and sells suspension parts for race cars, and also is the Midwest distributor for pitboxes.com, a company that manufactures race-day pit-boxes and commercial toolboxes.

"I use that money to live off of, and if I have any extra, I put it into the race car," he said.

Driving 'smart'

Petty, who has raced in a handful of ARCA races since 2005, is competing in the series full-time for the first time this year. He has managed to stay in the top 15 of the series standings despite being a relative newcomer with limited financial resources.

"Part of it is just being smart," Petty said. "At some of those big tracks we're just going to stay out of trouble, get our laps in, try to get a decent finish and move on to the short track. Our program is more suited to the short track."

His three top-15 finishes have all come at half-mile tracks. Although he hasn't placed in the top 10 this season, he has finished all nine races he has started.

Help from home

While he does not have the backing from a big-name NASCAR program, Petty gets plenty of help from home.

Along with a slew of local sponsors from Salina, Minneapolis and Smolan, Petty also gets assistance from relatives and family friends.

"I think every aunt and uncle he has has helped him in some way or another," Joe Petty said. "No one has been able to help a tremendous amount, but he gets some help from everybody and certainly that makes (racing) possible."

When Joe, a welder and mechanic in Salina, is not driving to and from Jeremy's races every weekend, he helps run Jeremy's two businesses, while his mom, Marilyn, takes care of the bookkeeping.

Petty said he probably wouldn't be able to race if he didn't get the help from his family and local sponsors.

"When a set of tires is $2,000, people don't think $100 bucks is that much, but $100 bucks is a big deal," He said. "When you are an independent team and you are doing as much as you can to keep up with the big boys, every nickel and dime makes a difference."

Racing as a career

Following in his father and grandfather's tracks, Petty started his stock car career racing on local dirt tracks.

His grandfather, Jack Petty, an inductee into the Kansas Auto Racing Museum and Wichita Racing Hall of Fame, won over 300 races driving sprint cars and late modified cars. Joe won over 40 races in his career, driving modifieds at regional dirt track races.

Jeremy raced soap-box cars and go-carts growing up and started racing modified dirt cars at Wichita's 81 Speedway and Minneapolis Raceway when he was 19.

"I was pretty much working on the car everyday," Petty said, "then we would go race on the weekends."

After a year of dirt racing he decided to try asphalt racing at Dodge City Raceway Park. He won his second asphalt race, and has raced mostly on asphalt since. He did, however, race several regional dirt tracks two summers ago, and watches local dirt racing whenever he can.

"I try to make it out to Minneapolis ... that's good racing out there," he said. "You don't have to be at Daytona."

The ARCA series includes two dirt track races this season.

Catching a break

The goal for most stock car drivers is to get a chance driving for a NASCAR team. Petty, a distant relative of NASCAR-legend Richard Petty, is no different.

"He's going to have to get a break at some point," Joe said. "It is very difficult for an independent to make it in racing."

Watching Jeremy recover from his accident 10 years ago has Joe convinced that Jeremy will make it.

"I realized that he was probably going to be successful at whatever he decided to do, because of how he handled that," Joe said. "He never got upset, he never got depressed and he never felt sorry for himself. I couldn't have handled it that way when I was his age."

Petty said he hopes to get a chance to drive in the NASCAR Truck series. He likes driving trucks so much, in fact, that after his accident he found another 1947 Hudson pickup, spent three years fixing it, and sold his other car.

"When I'm back home, that's my everyday vehicle. The speedometer doesn't work, it doesn't have air conditioning, but it has a good radio," he said. "I just love it."

n Reporter Joel Aschbrenner can be reached at 823-6464, ext. 149 or by e-mail at jaschbrenner@salina.com.