Richard Petty was at Richmond International Raceway on Friday, the first time he’s been at the race track since his wife Lynda Petty’s death in March, and while he’s happy to be back, he’s still mourning and “learning to live all over again.”
Lynda Petty, 72, had been ill for some time before she died March 25.
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Petty, who missed numerous races, had never been away from the race track for such a long period.
Co-owner of
Richard Petty Motorsports, the racing icon told USA Today he was “back in the saddle now.”
He also said he was “still surviving.”
“It's going to be a little different, I guess. After 55 years, you start all over again," Petty said. “(The team) kept me informed, called up every day about what was (going) on. Watched some of it on TV, but it's still not the same as being there."
Petty shared some of his memories of Lynda Petty with USA Today, and tlaked about how she never met a stranger. “Every once in a while, I’d come in the house and see people I didn’t even know — she invited them to the house to spend the night or whatever. It’s just going to be different.”
"He's doing pretty good, he's used to going to the racetracks and being at the racetracks alone, but he's not used to being at home and being alone," Petty’s son, NASCAR announcer
Kyle Petty, told The Associated Press earlier in April. "So I've stayed with him some, and my sisters have stayed some. It's just going to take time. They were together 57 years and even though he spent 50 of those 57 years on the road, according to him, at race tracks, it's been a lot harder and a lot tougher (than he thought)."
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