Young Richard Petty Gets NASCAR Win No. 1 on His Way to 200 in 1960

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• In his first full-time NASCAR season, and in the sixth race of the year, Richard Petty went to victory lane at the Southern States Fairgrounds.

• The win, which came on a half-mile dirt track in Charlotte, came on February 28, 1960.

• Petty would wind up finishing second in the overall Grand National (later known as NASCAR Cup) standings that season.

Richard Petty is known for his record 200 wins in NASCAR Grand National and Cup competition.

But did you know that he actually had 201 wins—well, kind of—until his father Lee threw him under the bus, so to speak?

As the late broadcaster Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story:

Young Richard, just three weeks shy of his 22nd birthday and in only his second part-time season of running in NASCAR’s Grand National Series, was initially declared the winner of the 150-lap event on the one-mile Lakewood Speedway dirt oval in Atlanta on June 14, 1959.

But father Lee Petty wasn’t having any of it. Forget about family relations or throwing his son a bone. A win was a win to Lee and he wanted Richard’s checkered flag. And, quite frankly, there was one other significant incentive for the elder Petty: the winner of the race earned $2,200, while runner-up paid $1,400.