Long live The King: Richard Petty to celebrate 25th anniversary of historic 200th win at Daytona

For Richard Petty, it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Others would go on to echo that sentiment, embracing July 4, 1984, as a day when a lot of good things happened in NASCAR.

Chief among them, though, was the legendary Petty snaring his 200th career Cup victory with President Ronald Reagan on hand. It's a mark that has and will stand the test of time, a testament to both an exceptional champion and a bygone era. No longer do drivers compete multiple times in a week. No longer do teams trek to dozens of tracks a season in a never-ending quest for wins and trophies. Never again will someone race long enough and well enough to win seven championships and 200 victories. At least not in an era that observers can fathom at this point.

Yet, 25 years ago, Petty did just that. The then-47-year-old driver hoisted the Cup trophy for the 200th time in his career. He did so on a national holiday and it also marked the first time a sitting president of the United States attended a NASCAR race.

It would be Petty's final victory as a driver, the crowning moment in a career filled with them. He would retire from driving in 1992, moving more fully into his role as team owner of Petty Enterprises.

Now, the man known as the King is preparing to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that moment. A few deals and mergers later, he's a co-owner of Richard Petty Motorsports, a four-car Sprint Cup organization housed in Statesville, N.C.

This weekend, though, he's just that incredible driver in the cowboy hat, the one who took NASCAR to a new level with both his on-track success and his off-track personality. In his heyday, fans felt as if they knew Petty. It has been said he never walked away from an autograph session until he had signed everything people put in front of him. History credits him with not only helping bring NASCAR to a national audience with his incredible successes but also with just that type of personality.

Petty was admired by a legion of fans - many of whom seemed to relate to him as someone just like themselves.

His reaction to that 1984 victory, and the implications of it, however, may show just how much of an everyday kind of man he is.

“I’ve been real fortunate," he says of that win. "That was one of the most magical days in Richard Petty’s life and the Petty family and in racing. I think that everybody from [President] Reagan on gained on that deal. I think Reagan maybe got a few more votes because he was running for president, but July the 4th, a picnic, the whole deal, it couldn’t have been a better script to come out on our side.

"I think it was really a super deal for racing because the president was there. He was the cake, and when I won the 200th that was the icing.”

It's one of those moments in time that others present remember well.

Bobby Allison was competing against Petty in that Daytona race, and he would go on to finish fourth that day. While he was an admirer of the president and enjoyed that he came to the race, he also obviously carries a lot of respect for Petty and what he accomplished.

“The guy went good on short tracks, long tracks, paved tracks, dirt tracks, road courses," Allison says. "He just really did a good job driving the car. They had good equipment, and they worked together as a family. Richard and his dad, Lee, running the thing, or at least directing it after he was injured, and Maurice, Richard’s brother, was a key part of the operation and became one of the renowned engine builders of NASCAR. Dale Inman, their cousin, was also a full time and strong member of the team, strong operator of the team. [The 200 wins] was a great achievement and something that you got to look at and say, 'Wow.'”

Crew chief Buddy Parrott says there wasn't really any pressure on the team to nab that 200th win. Every so often someone would bring it up, but for the most part they just focused on each race as it came.

Perhaps because it was his last win, or maybe because the sitting president was on hand, whatever the reason, Petty remembers only snippets of that race weekend

He can't even remember where he qualified. For a man who competed in 1,184 races over the course of his career, that probably wasn't even all that important.

Like everyone else, there was the excitement surrounding the arrival of the president.

Petty's memories skip to the end of the race, when he was battling Cale Yarborough for the lead. They were side by side for the lead going into Turn 3, going into Turn 4 and heading toward the line. The race would end under caution after a car flipped, so Petty and Yarborough were battling for the win as they raced to the line. Petty would be the victor.

"I happened to be on the inside lane, and when we got to the dogleg, then we both turn and my car runs three-foot shorter than his, and I wind up winning the race," Petty says. "… They had said for the winner to stop at start/finish line and get out of the car and go up into the announcer's booth because the president was up in the announcer's booth. So I get out of the car, and I wander up, go up in and talk to the president a little bit up there, and he's kind of blown away because you know, we are running side by side and smoke is coming off the car and running 200 miles [an hour], blew his min. He had not seen anything particularly like that.

"Then we got through that and came back down to the winner's circle, and we do the winner's circle for the 200th win and all this stuff, and when that was over with, then they let everybody out of the track, and they let all of the drivers and crew chiefs and their families and stuff back into the garage area. And we had a picnic with the president of the United States on July the 4th, so you know, it was a great, great day for us. I think it was a great day for racing."

So do others. Ned Jarrett remembers that race well.

"They were racing for the lead, and they were coming up on a lapped car," he says. "I don’t remember who that was. Richard got a little bit of a draft off of that car and passed Cale as they got to the start/finish line, and then the caution came out. Cale, of course, came in the pits the next lap. He thought the race was over. I don’t know how many positions that cost him. He knew he had lost the race and thought the race was over.

"That made it even more dramatic to have them come across the start/finish side by side and it be Richard’s 200th win in front of the president was very special.”

Years later, as drivers and observers look back at that race, they say its impact can not be overstated.

It was a perfect melding of factors, a day when NASCAR proved just how much of a national sport it was. It helped launch NASCAR more completely from its Southern roots into the mainstream. And it did so with a president in attendance.

Having an iconic figure such as Richard Petty win at that point merely added to the sentimental perfection of that outing.

“I think it was very big," Jarrett says. "The sport has been blessed over the years for something to happen, it seems like at opportune times, to take the sport to another level. It’s not by planning that it happens that way. It just happens. Certainly, that’s one of the times that ranks very high as far as what it did for the sport and the notoriety that it brought to the sport and credibility.

"I would say that it ranks in the top five, maybe even at the top. There’s a number of things, when Winston came in [as the Cup series sponsor] that was very, very big. The 1979 Daytona 500 was very, very big. The 1992 race at Atlanta when Jeff Gordon ran his first race and Richard ran his last race and the championship was decided by who led the most laps. That was a big day for the sport. Certainly when the president was there and Richard won his 200th, that ranks very high.”