Petty's woes
You won't be reading a whole lot about Kyle Petty this weekend, and for good reason: He might not make Saturday's race. Here's something from Dustin Long's notes that didn't make today's paper (the rest of the NASCAR Notebook is here):
CLIMBING UP: Sterling Marlin finished 29th Sunday at California to leapfrog Kyle Petty to grab the final guaranteed starting spot for this weekend’s race at Richmond.
The top 35 in car owner points are guaranteed a starting spot. The rest must qualify on time. Petty finished 35th at California and trails Marlin by two points in the car owner standings.
Here's the proof. Lucky for Kyle that he's 110 ahead of Kvapil and 200-and-change ahead of Mikey Waltrip. In other words -- assuming Petty makes the race -- he only has to worry about the No. 14.
But will Petty make the race? Qualifying results are hard to dig out, so here is Petty's lifetime performance at Richmond. He has one of his eight career wins at RIR, but that was 20 years ago. His best recent showing was seventh in May 1999. In the 13 races since then, Petty has failed to finish on the lead lap in exactly all of them.
Dark times indeed.