“We’re closer now than we’d ever been.” This is what both Richard Petty and Kyle Petty agreed upon in a previous Dale Earnhardt Jr. podcast episode. It’s a rare skill to be a 7-time Cup Series champion and also be the best father for your son. Many times, Kyle has admitted to not being very close with his father, at least in their early days, when Petty was in his prime. But thankfully, he had a second father in NASCAR who taught him not just the trades of the racetrack but also how to be a better man and a better father!

And folks, this seems to a common theme with 7-time champions and their sons. Even Dale Jr. has been vocal about how Dale Sr. wasn’t around much when he was growing up. But Junior did not have what Petty managed to find when he joined SABCO Racing. The NASCAR veteran not only had the most success in his career then, but he also calls those the “best years of his life.” And it was thanks to one man and one man only!

Kyle Petty’s relation with Felix Sabates

Folks, this has got to be one of the best owner-driver stories in NASCAR. To get the whole picture, we need to go back to 1986, when Kyle Petty joined Wood Brothers Racing. He was with the team for three seasons and managed to get two wins, a few good finishes, and he had a decent campaign with them. (P10 in ’86, P7 in ’88). However, WBR was looking for more! They were probably finding their next David Pearson after he quit the team in ’79. So, after the 1989 season concluded, WBR replaced Petty with Neil Bonnett. And Petty was left hanging without a ride.

But Petty happened to be good friends with Rick Hendrick, and he called him up. Petty, sharing this moment on Kevin Harvick’s ‘Happy Hour’ podcast, said, “I didn’t have anything, and I called Rick [Hendrick]. And Rick said let me think about it and then Rick called me back. He says, ‘I’m selling a team to this guy. Felix Sabates’.” Mr. H was quick to move things around. A meeting was arranged with Felix. For the folks who don’t know, Felix Sabates was a Cuban, and he looked like a boss straight out of a gangster movie. And that’s pretty much how Petty’s first meeting with him felt.

“So I’m in Chicago making an appearance, and I get a message from Rick… And he said, ‘I need you to come back to Charlotte.’ I don’t tell anybody; I just leave the appearance. I catch a commercial flight to Charlotte, get off, guy is standing with a card that says Petty. I wave, he puts me in the back of a car, he takes me around the airport to a hangar. We go in the hangar, pitch black. He takes me to an office. Sets me down, said somebody will be here in the next 30 to 40 minutes. And I’m like, someone gonna kill me. And nobody knows where I am.”

Petty eventually sat down with Ted Connor and Felix Sabates and started discussing plans for their team, SABCO Racing. “He starts telling me all the things he’s gonna do, and I’m like, ‘You’re gonna go broke dude,'” Petty shared. “I drove for him for the next 8-9 best years of my life. And I won races, but that didn’t have anything to do with that. It was just being with Felix… The things he taught me about life. And I say this: I love my dad to death. But we never told each other we loved us. You never hugged; you never did that. Felix never let his kids leave the house without telling them that he loved them. He never let his kids leave the house without hugging them. I mean, that was just- I mean, that was how I wanted to be as a dad. He changed a lot of perception of how men should be, an incredibly smart man.”

Petty was just from a different time and a different culture. Kevin Harvick said, “It’s a different era,” and it really was. Take Dale Earnhardt Jr., for example. His father, Dale Earnhardt the ‘Intimidator,’ could not give a young Junior the time he needed. Junior also admitted in a conversation with Graham Bensinger in 2023, “The only reason I raced was to get closer to my dad… Nothing I did would register with him… Finally when I started racing and I won a couple of races, I noticed we would talk about it.” This shows that Kyle Petty was not alone in feeling this way, and Felix Sabates had always been an advocate for Kyle.

He was probably one of the few people who saw potential in him and nurtured it. And even Kyle’s best seasons in NASCAR also came with Felix. ’92 and ’93, Kyle Petty got a back-to-back 5th place season finish in the Cup Series with SABCO Racing. Remember back in 1990, Sabates had said, “People never gave Kyle a fair shot. Half of him imagined that he was the next Willie Nelson, and the other half thought he had to be the next Richard Petty. It was tough on him, but I think he’s back on the right path now.” 

Also, while Kyle Petty and Richard Petty did not have the father-son love you’d expect, they still had a very special bond that bloomed after their careers were over.

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Kyle Petty’s special bond with Richard Petty

Folks imagine the kind of pressure Kyle must have getting into racing, son of legend and grandson of an ultra legend. Lee Petty was one of the first drivers and champions of the sport. Between all this pressure, Richard Petty could not make time for Kyle. The ‘King’ had previously admitted how he was closer to his late grandson Adam Petty than he was with Kyle. “I was closer to Adam than I ever was with Kyle because growing up and doing things, I was so busy I just let him be his own man.”

This led to Kyle juggling a lot of roles in his NASCAR career. Before joining Felix, he was driving for Petty Enterprises. Which basically made Richard Petty his boss. Kyle Petty had spoken on this earlier. He had said, “There’s a period of my life that I was Richard Petty’s son. And then there was a period of my life that I worked for Richard Petty. And then there was a period that I was teammates with Richard Petty. And then there was a period that I went and drove somewhere else and I was a competitor. And then I gave that up, and I came back, and I was his business partner.”

It’s rare for a son to have played so many different roles with his father. And that’s what makes them tight now. At the end of it all, it became a full circle moment. After both of their racing careers were done and dusted, Kyle was back to being a son to Richard Petty. And Kyle must be grateful to have this. In the era that Richard Petty drove, NASCAR wasn’t the safest sport. Kyle remembers playing with some kids in the grandstands when he was young, but suddenly, they would not be there in the next race. Because their fathers had been killed in a race.

Petty recently spoke on this horror: “I remember playing with kids there, and their mom would come get them, and you’d never see them again because their dad had been killed at Daytona. Friday Hassler is a perfect example of a gentleman there was killed there. Never saw his kids again. It was almost 40 years before I ever ran into his kids again.” No matter what, Kyle and Richard Petty will remain one of the best father-son duos in NASCAR.

Folks, what are your thoughts on Kyle Petty’s racing story? Share them with us in the comments below.