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Catching Up With Andy Petree | Lights Out With John Roberts · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:06
  And folks, it is time to go lights out with the one and only
• 0:10
  Andy Petrie. Andy, I think it's been a while
• 0:12
  since the race. Fans have seen you man.
• 0:14
  What do you been up to? What's a day like for you these
• 0:16
  days? Yeah, Hey, Jr. it's good to good
• 0:19
  to catch up with you. You know, I've just been doing a
• 0:21
  lot of things, catching up on honey do lists and, you know,
• 0:25
  just doing things. I enjoy doing a lot of
• 0:28
  helicopter trips, working with some people on some business
• 0:32
  side things with helicopters. But yeah, just kind of enjoying
• 0:36
  life. How about you?
• 0:37
  Been good. Well, pretty much the same thing
• 0:40
  as but you know, we've been doing this podcast here Andy and
• 0:43
  we'd like to talk to some of our old friends that we worked with
• 0:46
  in the past, but also guys that you now you and me talked about
• 0:50
  this before. Andy.
• 0:51
  We're looking back at some of the guys that really, you know,
• 0:54
  years ago pulled themselves up from the bootstraps and made
• 0:57
  somethings out of something out of themselves through the racing
• 0:59
  business. Now you've had a tremendous
• 1:02
  amount of success, Andy, when you get a moment to look back on
• 1:05
  some of the things you've done being a part of Champion ships
• 1:08
  and I remember so clearly you banging on the windshield of a
• 1:12
  Bobby Hamilton driven car after a victory.
• 1:14
  When you look back at those things, Andy, how satisfying is
• 1:17
  that for you it? Really is, I mean, I look back
• 1:21
  on the things that I was able to accomplish or, or lucky enough
• 1:25
  to be involved in. It's really amazing.
• 1:28
  I mean, kind of, you know, from where I came from, it was, you
• 1:30
  know, I couldn't even dream this big really.
• 1:33
  And, and so many doors open for me, you know, I enjoyed more
• 1:38
  success than I deserve. And, and, you know, I don't
• 1:41
  know, I just, I've just been blessed, I guess I, I can't
• 1:43
  really explain it. So what was growing up like for
• 1:46
  you, Andy? Where'd you grow up and what
• 1:48
  made you look towards a racing business?
• 1:51
  Yeah, I grew up in Newton, NC, not far from where I live now.
• 1:53
  I live here on Lake Norman in Denver, NC, but not far from
• 1:57
  here. And it was about 5 miles from
• 2:00
  the Hickory Speedway. So that's, that's kind of how I
• 2:02
  got my, I don't know, my, my itch for racing was because I
• 2:06
  could hear those guys running over there even at a really
• 2:09
  young age. But I grew up in Newton, NC,
• 2:12
  went to high school there, Newton Conover High School.
• 2:14
  And then just, I mean, I got, I got the racing bug and I got bit
• 2:18
  bad when I was probably 12 years old when my uncle took me to my
• 2:21
  first race up on A at Hickory on a Sunday afternoon.
• 2:25
  And I knew right then I walked up that ramp at Hickory Speedway
• 2:29
  to go into the track and I heard those cars running.
• 2:31
  As soon as I saw them, I knew, I mean, I was it for life.
• 2:33
  I knew that's what I was going to do the rest of my life.
• 2:36
  So, Andy, I had a interesting story that you told me about
• 2:40
  where you were selling batteries and then volunteering at Richard
• 2:43
  Childress Racing. Yeah, no, no, no, we got, you
• 2:46
  got some things kind of confused right there.
• 2:49
  But I was going to set the record straight up.
• 2:51
  I got, you know, I, I got my start with Dale Jarrett.
• 2:54
  We actually built a limited sportsman car back in I'd say 77
• 2:58
  ish 78 and that's how Dale got his start and and it kind of set
• 3:03
  my career path as well, you know, as being a crew chief.
• 3:05
  But we built that car in a couple of seasons at Hickory
• 3:10
  kind of ran out of money. We never had any money.
• 3:12
  Heck, we were broke from the start, but we ended up not being
• 3:14
  able to continue that. So Dale found some other ways to
• 3:17
  to go, you know, about his career from some other people.
• 3:19
  And you know, I was I was working in a tire store
• 3:23
  actually, and and my wife was pregnant with our first child.
• 3:26
  And then some things happened at the tire store where I didn't
• 3:30
  have a job anymore, right. So I knew that the next thing I
• 3:33
  want, I wanted to work full time in in the sports.
• 3:35
  I got, I got Dale Jarrett to get his dad Ned to how to put out
• 3:40
  some feelers in the in the racing community and see if he
• 3:43
  could find a position for me. And he did.
• 3:45
  He actually went to Junior Johnson and he told, he told him
• 3:50
  a pretty big tale. He told Junior that was this
• 3:52
  great tire changer because he he knew that junior needed a tire
• 3:55
  changer. It was in 1981 with a Mountain
• 3:58
  Dew car and and Darrell Waltrip. And keep in mind, I've never
• 4:02
  changed the tire in my career ever on a on a race car.
• 4:06
  Now I'm trying to change a lot in the tire store, but not, but
• 4:09
  not on a race car. But you know, back then you
• 4:12
  didn't practice pit stops. You didn't do anything like
• 4:14
  that. And, and junior hired me.
• 4:16
  So I, you know, I didn't see him basically never seen me change a
• 4:19
  tire just on Ned's word. And we go to the first race that
• 4:24
  we, that actually changed tires was in Riverside, CA in June of
• 4:28
  1981. And caution come, we sell on the
• 4:31
  pole, caution comes out. I mean, you can't, I can't tell
• 4:34
  you how nervous I was for this. Now the caution comes out,
• 4:39
  junior holds up 4 tires and we come down pit Rd. and chase 4
• 4:43
  tires and I, I couldn't breathe. But the Long story short is we
• 4:47
  end up winning that race and and it actually kind of set me on
• 4:52
  track to get, you know, kind of beat in the sport.
• 4:55
  Man, I had to work really hard to stay there.
• 4:58
  So I only really changed tires for junior that season.
• 5:00
  I didn't really work in the shop.
• 5:02
  So what I did for a full time job, and this has come back to
• 5:04
  the tires or the batteries salesman is I sold batteries
• 5:09
  during the week, change tires on the weekends.
• 5:11
  And that's kind of how I got my, you know, my, my battery
• 5:15
  salesman career going. Yeah.
• 5:18
  So, Andy, when you have an opportunity once to get in the
• 5:22
  door, I know you were an innovator, you were successful
• 5:25
  and you had to be one of the hardest working guys in there to
• 5:28
  move up through the ranks like you did.
• 5:30
  But what was your involvement with the machine called the
• 5:33
  Seven Post Shaker? Well, OK, so, so the seven post
• 5:38
  rig is a completely different machine than what I kind of
• 5:41
  invented or, or end up selling quite a few of them.
• 5:44
  So the seven post was more like a laboratory instrument.
• 5:48
  Very, very expensive. It's, you know, millions of
• 5:50
  dollars for these things. But I, I saw a need for
• 5:53
  something much simpler. It was basically a four post rig
• 5:57
  that, you know, we ended up putting in the floor of our shop
• 6:00
  for the first one to do a lot of the development on the spring
• 6:04
  set up. Back then the salt springs were
• 6:06
  just kind of coming around. Nope.
• 6:07
  Nobody had a really good way of testing it unless you went to
• 6:10
  the track and had your car instrumented.
• 6:12
  And we've done a test in Homestead and we got rained out
• 6:17
  for half of it and I didn't get to do a lot of stuff.
• 6:19
  And I'm on the plane coming back.
• 6:20
  Thank you, man. If we could come up some way to
• 6:22
  do this in our shop, we wouldn't have to be on the track to test
• 6:26
  all these things. And so that's when I drew it out
• 6:29
  on basically on a napkin for our head engineer that I had only
• 6:32
  had one engineer at the time. His name was Terry Satchel,
• 6:35
  Brilliant, brilliant guy. And I draw it all out for him
• 6:38
  and he engineered the whole thing.
• 6:39
  And we end up putting one in our shop and it made a big
• 6:42
  difference in in our development.
• 6:45
  And so I kept it a secret. You know, we're in
• 6:47
  Hendersonville. We're kind of out of the out of
• 6:50
  the loop on on all the people in the morsel area, Charlotte area,
• 6:53
  and so not a lot of people knew we had it, but it started
• 6:56
  getting out there. And so by the time that I sold
• 7:00
  out Andy Petrie racing Ray ever him called me, said he he wanted
• 7:05
  to buy want me to build him one of those things and I was like,
• 7:08
  Oh God, no, I think it took too much to build it.
• 7:11
  And so he finally convinced me to build 1.
• 7:14
  And so that's what started it and and we ended up building
• 7:17
  third like 33 of them and installing them in most of the
• 7:20
  most of the major shops. That is pretty cool.
• 7:23
  You know Andy, when I used to do the program with Chocolate
• 7:27
  Myers, he he used to joke that they only worked half days at
• 7:32
  Richard Childress Racing 12 hours.
• 7:34
  Yeah, that's the half day. You had another 12 hours.
• 7:36
  Off if you're going to get ahead, and you mentioned, you
• 7:38
  mentioned Ray Everingham, one of the first guys that really
• 7:42
  burned a candle at both ends, you had to work like that in
• 7:46
  racing, didn't you, to get ahead.
• 7:48
  Always, I mean, when I, you know, you brought back on, it
• 7:50
  goes back to that beginning part when I finally got my first full
• 7:53
  time job in a in a cup shop that was at Benny Parsons when he was
• 7:57
  a Copenhagen sponsored car here in Denver.
• 7:59
  And I remember I just, I loved it so much.
• 8:03
  I wanted to make sure that I, I outworked everybody around me
• 8:07
  just just to make sure I could keep a spot, right, Because
• 8:09
  there's only so many of those jobs or spots in the sport.
• 8:12
  And I wanted to make sure that I had one.
• 8:15
  And, and so I, I mean, I made sure that I outworked everybody
• 8:18
  around me and it ended up opening up a lot of doors.
• 8:21
  But yeah, it, it's, it's amazing.
• 8:24
  You know how hard, yes, you can. It literally worked those 1215
• 8:29
  hour days, I mean almost regularly to get to the tracks.
• 8:33
  We didn't have airplanes. Mostly, you know, we're just
• 8:36
  getting in a van where handful of guys builds a car.
• 8:38
  We, you know, drive all day to get or night to get to the track
• 8:42
  and then the same thing coming back and get back to work on the
• 8:44
  car. I remember just falling asleep
• 8:46
  underneath cars because we've been working for 20 hours.
• 8:48
  That's right. I mean, that's just the way it
• 8:50
  was. So of all the guys you worked
• 8:53
  with, Andy, you mentioned Benny Parsons and the Jarretts and
• 8:57
  also Junior Johnson, but your time with with Dale Earnhardt,
• 9:03
  certainly one of the greats of all times, what was that like
• 9:07
  for you? What was his influence like on
• 9:08
  you? Yeah, So I I came to Richard
• 9:11
  Childress after having quite a bit of success with Harry Gant.
• 9:14
  I knew that was an opportunity of a lifetime that got handed to
• 9:17
  me. They offered me that position as
• 9:19
  crew chief for Dale Earnhardt. I mean, you never turn that
• 9:22
  down, right? I mean, I took it and I mean, I
• 9:28
  knew he was good, right? I mean, he won championships of
• 9:30
  races. But to see it first hand, to see
• 9:32
  what kind of, you know, real really the stuff they had get my
• 9:36
  hands on it, seeing everything that they were, you know,
• 9:39
  working with and seeing what he was doing with it.
• 9:41
  It was like, you know, wow, this guy is better than I thought.
• 9:46
  And so, you know, that they didn't come without a lot of
• 9:50
  bumps in the road. The first couple of months.
• 9:54
  He and I were so much alike. We were butting heads on a lot
• 9:56
  of things. And he, you know, act like he
• 9:58
  kind of wanted to steer the ship and that's, you know, it's not
• 10:00
  what I came over there to do. And and so Richard brought us in
• 10:04
  his office there quite early, said, hey, you guys got to learn
• 10:07
  how to figure this out or it's not going to work.
• 10:10
  He said she got you got to start bonding.
• 10:12
  He was just this, I never forget this meeting we had in his
• 10:15
  office, you know, And so Earnhardt, he looks over at me
• 10:18
  and we're sitting across from Richard's desk and he says, all
• 10:21
  right, Richard, we're going to bond.
• 10:22
  We're going, we're going, we're going to Darlington this week
• 10:24
  and we're going to go to dinner. We're going to bond, we're
• 10:26
  going, we're going to figure this out.
• 10:28
  And so he put a major effort in that, you know, right.
• 10:30
  So if he's doing it, I am too. And so I kind of came up with an
• 10:35
  unorthodox way of practicing for the for the race at Darlington
• 10:39
  because I wanted to run the run the car because the tires were
• 10:41
  very marginal. I wanted to run them till they
• 10:43
  failed in practice. And he is like, what?
• 10:47
  And I said, trust me, they give you a warning.
• 10:49
  We're going to do this and we're going to figure out how to make
• 10:51
  these tires last longer than the other guys because you know, you
• 10:53
  have about what, 3 or 4 practice sessions to do this.
• 10:57
  Well, at the end of the day, we did end up winning.
• 11:00
  And it was because that, you know, we did have that, that
• 11:02
  little bonding session and he and we started seeing eye to
• 11:05
  eye. And after we won that first
• 11:07
  race, it was just kind of, you know, it was, it was good from
• 11:09
  there. Yeah, all those stories go like
• 11:13
  that and you guys had a tremendous amount of success
• 11:14
  there. But Andy, you also had a
• 11:17
  tremendous amount of sense when success rather when you jumped
• 11:21
  in the broadcast booth. What what led you to that?
• 11:23
  What was the first time someone asked you to do TV?
• 11:27
  Oh, that's kind of a crazy story.
• 11:28
  So I've been retired. I kind of did this retirement
• 11:30
  thing in reverse until I finally did it for real here a year and
• 11:33
  a half ago. But I was, I sold my team out
• 11:37
  because, you know, the sponsorship money, you know, was
• 11:39
  drying up and I didn't have the depth to keep it going.
• 11:41
  So I sold everything, had been pretty successful in my career.
• 11:44
  And I thought, you know what, my daughter's young, she's playing
• 11:47
  on, you know, a lot of sports. I'm going to follow her around.
• 11:49
  I bought some property, you know, built, built a little barn
• 11:53
  on it and built us a practice field for the softball girls.
• 11:56
  And I was out there on a tractor one day and I had two guys up in
• 11:59
  the main shop that I had. I had another shop building
• 12:02
  those suspension rigs we talked about and I came up there and it
• 12:06
  was in the summer to get some Gatorade or get some water.
• 12:09
  And I walk in and said, hey, somebody just called the shop
• 12:11
  here looking for you and said they were with ESPN.
• 12:15
  He said it may have been selling magazines or something, I don't
• 12:17
  know. But there's a number over there
• 12:19
  on on the desk and it was Jill Frederickson.
• 12:21
  And you, you, you remember her name, right?
• 12:23
  I. Remember Jill very well.
• 12:24
  I called Jill and it was legit. I mean, they they had just got
• 12:27
  the contract back for NASCAR and we're looking for talent for the
• 12:30
  booth and I want to know if I was interested in in auditioning
• 12:33
  for that. I was like, huh, I never thought
• 12:36
  about that, but yeah, maybe. And yeah, went through a few
• 12:39
  auditions and finally realized, hey, this is going to be
• 12:42
  something I want to do. And it turned out to be a
• 12:44
  really, really good, you know, eight years that I spent at
• 12:47
  ESPN. They were they were great
• 12:49
  people. I work with some of the best in
• 12:51
  the TV business, you know, Alan Beswick in the booth, Gary Punch
• 12:55
  and, you know, I mean, Rusty Wallace, Dale Jarrett, all these
• 12:58
  guys, Brad Daugherty. I mean, there's so many, I can't
• 13:00
  even name them all. There was, it was a great, great
• 13:03
  experience and, you know, a good eight years.
• 13:06
  So now they probably didn't tell you though, when they moved you
• 13:09
  over to Fox, when you came over to Fox, who you might have to
• 13:12
  work with when you came to Fox. No but it but that.
• 13:15
  Helped that out. They are.
• 13:17
  I'll tell you, we've had some good times on that show on that.
• 13:20
  Yeah. So that that was another really
• 13:23
  great time. You know, I think I spent about
• 13:24
  10 years at Fox doing that show, but they cancelled it.
• 13:29
  That was so sad. I'm like, man, it's like this
• 13:31
  one fun things that I'm doing, you know?
• 13:33
  The rest of the time. I think this was.
• 13:35
  Fun. Yeah, I think we annoyed our
• 13:37
  producers a little bit because we're probably.
• 13:40
  But that's good. Prod you.
• 13:41
  I'd always prod you to do one with all these.
• 13:43
  Yeah, go ahead and do me a scarlet Marlon real quick while
• 13:46
  we're on the air here. Will Yeah, Rape spoke.
• 13:51
  Yeah, Sterling's just up the road here.
• 13:52
  We could have him do that himself.
• 13:55
  But but Andy, looking back at this, I think there's been a lot
• 13:58
  of people over the years I think that have really benefited from
• 14:02
  being involved in NASCAR. I think there's I think there's
• 14:05
  rich guys who become racers and racers who become rich guys
• 14:08
  because of their love for the sport.
• 14:11
  I think NASCAR provides an opportunity for somebody to pick
• 14:14
  themselves up by their bootstraps like really none
• 14:17
  other. Yeah, it's, I'm a case in point
• 14:20
  there. I mean, I was just a, you know,
• 14:23
  very from a just a very, you know, modest family in, in, in a
• 14:26
  small town in North Carolina and racing opened up every door for
• 14:30
  me. You know, I tried to kick them
• 14:33
  down when they opened. But without, you know, without
• 14:35
  NASCAR, without racing, I wouldn't have.
• 14:37
  I don't even, I honestly don't know where my life would have
• 14:39
  gone. I know that I would have always
• 14:41
  had a passion for it, but but I never imagined it being
• 14:46
  something that I could be successful, you know, and make,
• 14:48
  make a little bit of money and, and, and then turn it into
• 14:51
  things like you said, the broadcasting career and all the
• 14:54
  other things that have come with it.
• 14:55
  So it's pretty, pretty amazing story.
• 14:57
  Really look back on on what I've been able to do in the sport.
• 15:02
  Yeah, I think a lot of us can say that same thing, Andy, and
• 15:05
  maybe not to the extent that that your success was, but it
• 15:08
  really opened up a lot of doors for a lot of people.
• 15:11
  Andy, how close do you pay attention to what goes on these
• 15:13
  days what what went on last year, some of some of the bad
• 15:16
  side of things. But then now to look at what's
• 15:19
  going on now with the TV ratings up, attendance up and the first
• 15:22
  couple weeks, it seems like there's a lot of energy around
• 15:24
  this sport. Are you keeping a close eye on
• 15:26
  it? Oh, yeah, You know, I, I was a
• 15:29
  fan 1st and will always be a fan.
• 15:31
  I watch all of them. Sometimes I don't catch them
• 15:34
  exactly live. I might get up, get late and
• 15:36
  catch up. But I do watch all the races.
• 15:39
  I've got some of the guys I really like, you know, to
• 15:41
  please, you know, see being successful.
• 15:43
  And Tyler Reddick's one of them. He's he's, he was, he was our
• 15:47
  boy at RCR when we first put him in a Cup car.
• 15:49
  And I love seeing him have success.
• 15:51
  So there's a, there's a few of those guys I really like to
• 15:53
  follow, but I just like the sport in general.
• 15:56
  I just, I love the, the competition and you know, and
• 15:59
  you talk about some of the things like the changes that
• 16:01
  we've had this year going into the season, I think they're
• 16:04
  going to be great. Everything's fine with me.
• 16:06
  I, I thought it was good before, Like I, I was OK with the
• 16:09
  playoff system and, and the way that all that was, but you know,
• 16:12
  a lot of fans weren't. And you know, what you got to do
• 16:14
  is listen to the fans and what they're saying.
• 16:17
  And I, I love the fact that NASCAR did that.
• 16:19
  You know, they, they didn't talk, they didn't ask me, right?
• 16:22
  They asked the fans what they want to see And, and they, they
• 16:25
  got that. And I think the fans are are
• 16:27
  pretty happy with what they what they got.
• 16:28
  Out of and another guy that's out there.
• 16:31
  I know you're probably looking at Andy because I remember
• 16:34
  seeing you on Pit Rd. and you said how about my little driver
• 16:37
  and you're talking about Jesse Love.
• 16:39
  Yeah, yeah. Jesse loves another one.
• 16:41
  So I didn't get to spend enough time with Jesse.
• 16:43
  We did, you know, pretty much I don't know what was a season or
• 16:47
  so there with him, but you know, go to Victory Lane with him in
• 16:51
  his first Xfinity win at Talladega.
• 16:53
  That was fine. And I'm enjoying his success.
• 16:56
  That that that championship run at Phoenix was, you know, I'm
• 16:59
  jumping, I'm in the middle of the room jumping up and down.
• 17:01
  Now I do have another a little bit of skin in the game.
• 17:03
  My son-in-law is also the tire changer for him and Austin
• 17:07
  Dillon. So I was kind of pulling for
• 17:08
  Josh. Yeah.
• 17:10
  Yeah, Josh Thomas is is my son-in-law and he changes front
• 17:12
  tires for for Jesse Love and for Austin Dill.
• 17:16
  So another thing Andy, that I think it's really good what we
• 17:18
  see a lot of guy A, you're living proof of it.
• 17:20
  But it it seemed like back in the old days we had guys that
• 17:22
  are around racing forever because there there wasn't the
• 17:27
  money, it wasn't there. But I think we see what, when I
• 17:30
  look at guys like you, Dale Junior is a great example and
• 17:35
  Dale Jarrett as well. Guys that were able to have good
• 17:38
  long careers in racing, whether it be ownership, crew chiefs,
• 17:42
  But now you're able to step back from the sport and do what you
• 17:45
  want to do. I love seeing that.
• 17:47
  Yeah, it is, it is a kind of a, you know, it's, it's fun to be
• 17:51
  able to do the things that you just kind of missed out on for.
• 17:55
  I was in it for 40 plus years, 40 what, 4041235 years,
• 18:00
  something like that. So I didn't get to do a lot, you
• 18:03
  know, this didn't have the, the freedom.
• 18:05
  I enjoyed the jobs, like every job I had in racing, I enjoyed,
• 18:09
  but the you're tied to this calendar that you got to be
• 18:12
  here, you got to be here, you got to be here.
• 18:14
  And that goes on and on and on for years that you finally, you
• 18:16
  know, you don't get to do these other things that you could put
• 18:19
  on the calendar if it wasn't a race on there.
• 18:21
  And so that's what I'm enjoying now.
• 18:23
  And you know, my wife and I have been on a couple cruises.
• 18:25
  We got a new, I say new grandbaby.
• 18:27
  She's like a year and a half, almost two years old now.
• 18:30
  And we get, we get her almost every day.
• 18:32
  And that's something I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to do is
• 18:34
  spend time with her if I had this full time job and had to
• 18:37
  run off. So it is good to be able to
• 18:39
  spend time doing other things. But there's things about the
• 18:43
  sport I miss too. And, and I'm still going to
• 18:46
  dabble in it some. As a matter of fact, this
• 18:47
  weekend I'm, I'm going to Sebring with my old buddy Alan
• 18:50
  Bestwick, and we're going to call the race down there, the
• 18:53
  Trans Am race. Awesome.
• 18:54
  That's good. Yeah.
• 18:55
  It's going to be a racing America and we're going to do
• 18:57
  that this weekend. And yeah, looking forward to it.
• 19:01
  Well, Andy, man, thank you so much for the time.
• 19:03
  I, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the, the little time we
• 19:06
  got to work together, but being around you, getting to know you,
• 19:09
  man, is something that again, I really cherish.
• 19:12
  It's great to catch up with you, man.
• 19:13
  Let's not make it so long next time around.
• 19:15
  But man, thank you so much for your time.
• 19:17
  Yeah, Jr. hopefully our paths cross real soon.
• 19:20
  We'll take care.