Kyle Petty is an eclectic personality. In addition to being a retired NASCAR driver turned NBC Sports analyst unabashed about sharing his strong opinions, he’s also a musician, a songwriter and, now, a published author.
In Petty’s new memoir with co-author Ellis Henican, “Swerve or Die,” he chronicles what it was like growing up as the third generation of NASCAR’s royal family — the grandson of three-time NASCAR champion Lee Petty, the son of seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty, whose 200 premier series wins ranks as the most all time — along with his own racing career, the heightened expectations he faced, and the trials and tribulations he’s dealt with on and off the track.
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The 62-year-old Petty also opens up on dealing with the death of 19-year-old son Adam Petty in 2000 following a crash in practice for a then-Busch (now Xfinity) Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. In the autobiography, released last month, Kyle Petty candidly shares the grieving process he went through and how losing Adam still affects him to this day.
In an in-depth interview with The Athletic, Petty discussed a variety of topics including why now was the right time to write “Swerve or Die,” what he learned about himself through the writing process, how he realized he hadn’t fully dealt with Adam’s death previously and why he found writing to be cathartic. Petty also shared why he’s not afraid to share his opinion as an NBC Sports analyst even if his opinions run contrary to most everyone else’s, and why he is bullish about NASCAR’s future as the league works to reestablish itself after a downturn.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You’ve long been a songwriter, but writing a book is a much different kind of challenge, so what made you decide to write a book?
You’re right, I’ve written songs forever. And when I say forever, I mean since high school. I’ve always written because the part of music that fascinated me was the writing part, and when the pandemic started (wife) Morgan was pregnant with our second child and we didn’t go anywhere. So I’d get up about 5:30 every morning and I’d play guitar and write (songs) for about an hour, and I was pretty regimented on that. And we were talking one day and I told Morgan, “I think I’m going to try to write a short story about just something that happened to me.”
The songs I write are story songs anyhow, so I kind of just spun it out. We’ve joked about it. She said we should have submitted it to the “Guinness World Records” as the longest run-on sentence without any punctuation in the history of the world. That was my first story. Then I’d sit down and write stories about growing up in Level Cross (N.C.), my first time in a race car, my dad, riding motorcycles; I probably wrote four or five stories.
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How long were the stories?
Most of them were somewhere between, probably 7,500 and 15,000 words. I would just ramble; it’s just a typical Kyle Petty story (Laughing). It’s a long ramble. And Morgan would edit them down and look at them because she’s really smart and I’m not, and after a while, she said, “Why don’t we just put these in a book?” And I said, “Well, they have no theme.” So I started talking to a couple guys and to my agents and told them what I was thinking and we came up with kind of a direction starting with Adam but including my granddad and my dad and how I grew up and some of the stories from them about how we got to where we were at. And along the way, there’s a little bit of NASCAR in there, because that’s what our story is about is NASCAR.
One interesting thing about the book is the title itself — “Swerve or Die.” How’d you settle on that title?
We’re back to music. Every good song has a hook, something that just grabs you, whether it’s a riff, whether that first guitar lick like in “Sweet Home Alabama” or whether it’s “Sweet Caroline.” For me, as we started talking titles, nothing hooked me, man. It’s not a hook because it doesn’t hit you between the eyes. So when we came up with this one, it was like, “This is it.”
When you say “Swerve or Die,” it’s just going to stick in your head for multiple reasons. Because of who’s saying it, because of the history of Adam, because of a lot of different things. And for me, as we wrote the book, we kind of had that in mind and tried to stay true to it because there’s moments in the book when my uncle Randy (Owens) was killed, when Adam was killed, when you get to the end of a line with a (team) owner, and when things happen to you, you can choose to hit the fetal position on the floor and not go any farther or you can choose to continue to live and not die, and you have to swerve, you have to change direction, and that’s the way I look at it.
You have to change the direction in your life to keep moving, and that’s what the story is.
One common theme throughout the book is the relationships you’ve had with people through the years. Obviously, the big one is with your father, Richard. How would you describe that relationship you had with your dad and how that relationship has evolved?
It’s so funny, because I was born in June of 1960, and I went to my first race in July of 1960 when I went to Daytona and I’ve been at a racetrack ever since. And the day I was born, I was Richard Petty’s son. And as I grew and started traveling with him to the racetrack, I was Richard Petty’s son. Then, they let me start working on the cars as I started coming to the shop and hanging out. Eventually, I was on his pit crew, so I was a crew member for Richard Petty. I was not only a son, but I also became a crew member for Richard Petty and I worked for Richard Petty.
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Then, I started driving and I became a teammate of Richard Petty. And then I left Petty Enterprises, I became a competitor of Richard Petty. So while I have worked with my dad in so many different situations and so many different angles, our relationship has always been about racing. Racing has always been at the center of it. And it’s funny, that’s the relationship he had with his dad.
There’s genuine love there and we love each other. I tell people we love each other enough that we can argue and talk and still hug and walk away and we’re still father and son and still love each other.
Our relationship is good. I talk to him every day. He’s 85 years old and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t call to check on him to see how he is. And even at 85, he’s still the busiest man in racing that I know. He continues to just beat it out and show up at the racetrack and stand on top of that truck, sign autographs and be Richard Petty, and that’s what he’s always going to be.
Another big element in the book is you go into detail about your relationship with Adam. How difficult was it to write about him and how you handled his death?
Quite possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. … Writing it was hard, but reading it and doing the audio version of the book was the hardest thing. When you’re writing and when you’re reading what you wrote, you’re kind of doing it inside your head so the words are never sent out into the universe. But when you say them aloud and the words are out there, that’s hard to process.
Here’s the thing, two things happen in this book. I realized that when my uncle Randy was killed when I was 14 that I had never dealt with it. I never really thought that deeply about it or realized how much it bothered me or examined that until I started into this book. And then with Adam, it was the same way. I realized that 20 years had passed at the time that I started (writing the book), and in the 20 years that had passed, I had basically just put all (my feelings) in a box, put the top on the box and walked down some hall inside my soul and put it in a room and shut the door and had never gone back to it. I had never really peeled the layers of it on what my emotions were and what my feelings were and dealt with each one of them.
That part emotionally was really, really hard. I had a hard time getting through that. And there were days (during the writing process) that we would just set it down and not even look at it, not even talk about it. And then I would have to get all my stuff together to come back and approach it and you couldn’t work long because I would fall apart. It fascinated me that it was still that raw because I had convinced myself that it wasn’t and that I had dealt with it. But it all was just under the surface and all you had to do was just peel it back a little bit and it all came out. Then the reading of it was the real hard part.
But in the end, after it was out, I won’t say it was a weight lifted off your shoulders, but it’s honestly like you saw the world differently. There was a little bit of light again, there wasn’t as much darkness there.
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As you peeled back the layers, what other discoveries did you make?
I always looked at Adam as just a 19-year-old kid who drove race cars, had a good time, just always had a smile on his face. I had to revisit how much I truly, truly loved him and how much he had just become my best friend and how much we did together and how big a hole he really left that I never bridged and never ever could pull both sides together and bridge that piece. And when you think back like this, it is just devastating to think that you just let that lay there for 20 years because it hurts so bad to look at it.
It was the little moments like just spending time with him in a bus at a racetrack or we’d go skeet shooting sometimes when we go to racetracks or just talking about racing. It’s just little things like that you go back and you revisit and you think you had forgotten all about that. And I never want to forget that. You never want to forget anything about your kids. Even if your kids are still here with you, you don’t want to forget. But when one leaves too quick, you want to remember everything.
Always fun to share the booth with these two at @TooToughToTame pic.twitter.com/pVxOqwsMFS
— Kyle Petty (@kylepetty) September 5, 2022
Your roots in this sport go way back to the very beginning of NASCAR, and your history and appreciation for the sport is really second to none. You also offer a perspective that is very unique and unafraid to look at things from a different perspective, whether that’s as a broadcaster for NBC Sports or as an author. Why do you have that outlook when not many people do?
When I have an opinion, it’s an opinion that takes into account maybe 40 years of racing, not just the last six months, not just the last 15 or 20 years. I’m an outsider from the standpoint that I’ve seen the B.S. on the outside sometimes because my opinions and the way I look at things is a broader view of the sport. It’s not just the ’90s, it’s not just the Jimmie Johnson era, it’s not the era we’re in now. It’s also the David Pearson era and the Richard Petty era and the Darrell Waltrip era and all these different eras.
I feel like I love (the sport) so much and I’m so passionate about it that I can be honest with it, and that it needs to look in the mirror and be honest with itself sometimes. And I think in recent years that’s exactly what it’s done. It’s become a lot more honest with itself. And I think it’s in a good place.
In the last chapter of the book, you focus on NASCAR and its future. What is your outlook on the direction NASCAR is going?
In all the years I’ve been in the sport, all the years, going back and being a kid and watching these cars and talking to my dad and growing up with those guys, I think this (Next Gen) car has changed the sport by leaps and bounds. Who’s ever seen a year with this many different winners? Teams like Trackhouse and Petty GMS — Petty GMS is a perfect example. Petty GMS is a team that rarely broke the top 20 last year and is now a top-10 team on a fairly consistent basis. Trackhouse has done phenomenal things.
Going to the L.A. Coliseum, this car opened that up; going to the streets of Chicago, this car opened that up. There are so many things you can point at with this Next Gen car and what it’s allowed NASCAR to do. That was a huge leap for NASCAR. I think it was a huge leap for the manufacturers. And I think there’s a huge leap for the teams to go out because it could have been 180 degrees from where it’s at.
The product on the track is what matters. And the product on the track this year has been good. Some days it’s been close to great. And it all starts there. Back in 1949, with Bill France during that first race, the product was good, so the people came. When the product fell off, the people stopped watching. And the product is good again. Now we have to get people to come back to it.
(Top photo of Adam, Richard and Kyle Petty: ISC Images & Archives via Getty Images)