Richard Petty is a certifiable NASCAR legend. He has won 200 races in his career, just one of the records he holds. He is also a seven time Daytona 500 winner, the only racer other than Dale Earnhardt to do so. There is no doubt that Petty is an all-time great when it comes to competitive racing.

In his 35 year career, he raced an astounding 1184 Sprint Cup races. His record includes not just 200 wins, but also 712 top ten finishes – an impressive achievement. Between 1971 and 1989, Petty had 513 consecutive starts; it is not for nothing that many believe him to be the greatest racer ever to get behind the wheel.

Petty comes from a racing family; his father Lee was the winner of 1959′s Daytona 500 (the first year that the event was held) and himself a NASCAR Championship winner three times over. His son Kyle is of course well known to NASCAR fans – and tragically, Petty lost his grandson Adam in a New Hampshire Interational Speedway accident only a little over a month after his father passed away.

The Petty family owns and operates their own racing team, Petty Enterprises. The team is based out of a former Yates Racing facility which boasts more than 100,000 square feet of space. Although his professional racing days are long behind him now, he is still frequently mobbed for autographs at his public appearances.

He started his racing career a few days after his 21st birthday, and in 1959 was named NASCAR Rookie of the Year, after 9 top 10 finishes that included six Top 5 finishes. In late 1991, Richard Petty announced that he would retire after the 1992 season and his final top ten finish came at the 1991 Budweiser at the Glen.

Richard Petty is remembered for three of the many crashes he survived. In 1970, at the Rebel 400, he was injured when his Plymouth Road Runner cut a tire and slammed into a wall, flipped several times, injured his shoulder and bounced his head off the pavement several times. This accident caused NASCAR to require the safety netting over the driver’s window.

Petty somehow managed to keep a broken neck a secret from the world, even competing in a few more races after being injured in a race at Pocono in 1980. His other incredible crash came in 1988 in the Daytona 500, when he was in a crash which sent pieces of his car flying – Petty himself though was able to walk away unhurt save for some temporary visual impairment.

In 1997, Petty was accorded some long due recognition, becoming an International Motorsports Hall of Famer. The following year saw him being named among the 50 greatest drivers in NASCAR and in 1992, he received the nation’s highest honor awarded to civilians, the Medal of Freedom.

Always known as a fan favorite, Petty would take hours after races to sign autographs for fans and acted as an effective ambassador for NASCAR racing. He has appeared in several films (as himself), including Stroker Ace, Speed Zone and Swing Vote.

With a racing heritage handed down from his father that won the first Daytona 500, and passed down to his racing son, Kyle, Richard Petty’s life has revolved around the racing world and continues to this day.