For Hall of Famer and his family, racing is life

By Jesse Granger

Monday, Oct. 19, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Pat Petrie climbed out of his race car in the middle of the Bullring track at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway to celebrate a top-three finish.

Seconds later, he dropped to the ground from a heart attack.

“I got out of my car and a guy came up to me with a bottle of water, and plunk,” said Petrie, who was 54 when the emergency occurred. “That was the last thing I remember. I dropped dead as a doornail, but I got lucky.”

The closest hospital was a nearly 20-minute drive, but an ambulance with a defibrillator sat only feet away.

Petrie awakened three days later in the hospital, where he remained for 29 days.

The heart attack didn’t snuff out his competitive drive, though.

“The next year, my family were all on my back to stay out of the car,” Petrie said. “But I told them I’m not going to lie down and go in a rocking chair. I’m going back to racing.”

Petrie didn’t just return to the track a year later, in 2001. He dominated the competition and won his fourth track championship in what would be the final season of his career.

Petrie was inducted Oct. 14 into the Colorado Motorsports Hall of Fame, where he began his career in 1963.

Born in Denver, Petrie became hooked on racing as a young man, alongside his cousins. Petrie would sneak into field racing competitions while still underage.

“I couldn’t race at the track that I wanted to because you had to be 21, whereas the other track you only had to be 18,” Petrie said. “I was only 17 at the time, but no one knew me, so I was able to do a little fudging and get in there.”

Petrie built his first race car on the chassis of a junker he obtained by trading his everyday car. He and his friends worked on the car during the harsh Colorado winter and raced it the following year.

“We really didn’t even know what we were doing, but my dad just let us go at it,” Petrie said. “But once he saw that we were serious and started actually racing the car, he got into it with me. On my 18th birthday, he brought me to this car lot that he worked at, and there was a race car that he had bought for me.”

Competing in compacts and Modified Division cars, he won the Late Model Lakeside Speedway in 1967 at age 22 and added Open-Wheel Modified title trophies at the speedway in 1977 and 1979.

In 1983, Petrie retired from racing with more than 150 career wins. He moved to Las Vegas and began helping his sons Pat Petrie Jr., Jim Petrie, Sam Petrie and Donnie Petrie with their racing careers. His fifth son, Joe Petrie, often served as their crew chief.

“There are families that go to the lake and go boating on the weekend,” Pat Petrie Jr. said. “There are families that go camping or whatever they like to do. What we did was go to the races. We grew up around it, and we always wanted to do it. And my dad was really successful, so that only amplified it. All of our friends and the other kids around the racetrack would want my dad’s autograph.”

Pat Petrie Jr. found the most success of all the siblings on the track, taking home a divisional title in 2001, at the same time Pat Petrie Sr. won his fourth championship.

Pat Petrie Sr. said that while that final championship wasn’t the most prestigious, it was his favorite moment of his career because he shared the win with his son.

“The first three championships that I won were much tougher than the last one,” Petrie said. “Back then, there were 70 or 80 cars in the same class every night. It wasn’t like now, where there are 20 cars. And back then, the quick cars had to start in the back. You had to pass all of the cars up to win, so you really had to learn how to drive.”

Petrie’s impact on the driving world wasn’t limited to the racetrack. He worked as a driver’s education instructor from 1970 to 1980 in Colorado.

“There would be a bunch of 14-year-olds sitting in a classroom, and I would walk in and they would all look at me with wide eyes and say, ‘You teach driver’s ed?’ ” Petrie said. “I told them, ‘I’ll tell you what you do. You get in the car, put your foot on the throttle, and you turn left.’ ”

All of those contributions helped earn Petrie what he considers the highest honor — his hall of fame induction. Along with Petrie, the 2015 class includes Joe Garone, president of Denver’s NASCAR Sprint Cup team Furniture Row Racing, and eight other Rocky Mountain racers.

While Petrie is a man of few words and doesn’t seek the spotlight, he enjoys reminiscing about his glory days at the track.

“I have a picture at home with me and seven other guys standing on the finish line next to our cars,” he said. “Of the eight guys in the picture, seven of them won championships, and I’m now the fifth one to be inducted into the hall of fame.”

Petrie also joins his cousin Sam Sauer as the second inductee in his family.

Now at 70 years old, Petrie still can’t stay away from the racetrack. He spends many weekends in the garage with his sons and watching them compete in local and regional competitions.

“Racing is like a woman, the love of your life,” Petrie said. “I could never leave it. It’s in my blood.”