{"id":11785,"date":"2014-02-21T15:51:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T20:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/?p=11785"},"modified":"2014-02-21T15:51:15","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T20:51:15","slug":"richard-petty-accepts-tony-stewarts-offer-to-race-danica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/02\/21\/richard-petty-accepts-tony-stewarts-offer-to-race-danica\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Petty accepts Tony Stewart&#8217;s offer to race Danica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10228 aligncenter\" alt=\"2\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2013\/10\/2.jpg\" width=\"575\" height=\"370\" srcset=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2013\/10\/2.jpg 575w, http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2013\/10\/2-300x193.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 575px) 100vw, 575px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Tony Stewart spoke out earlier this week about comments Richard Petty made about his race car driver, Danica Patrick. Stewart threw out an offer to the King on Performance Racing Network that the two should race each other.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I told her she should challenge Richard to a heads-up race,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cI think that would pretty much settle it once and for all. Maybe get him to shut up a little bit, too. He drove in an era when he had cars that were superior to what everyone else was running a lot. I think he forgets that NASCAR has changed a lot since he was a driver and how hard it really is now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stewart even said he would supply the cars, \u201dI will supply the cars. I don\u2019t care. If he wants to race her, I\u2019ll make sure they have exactly the same setup in the car and give him a chance. He can drive one of my 14 cars. I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"kaltura_player_1393015578\" style=\"border: 0px solid #ffffff;\" src=\"http:\/\/cdnapi.kaltura.com\/index.php\/kwidget\/wid\/1_4zq5rvoj\/uiconf_id\/6740162\/st_cache\/74248?&amp;\" height=\"360\" width=\"640\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Petty appeared on Fox and Friends on Friday morning, and when asked if he would be up for the challenge, the 76-year old said he would do it.\u00a0&#8220;I&#8217;m 76 years old, OK?&#8221; Petty said on Fox News. &#8220;It&#8217;s been 25 years since I&#8217;ve been in a race car. But I&#8217;ll take that challenge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The host asked again, &#8220;Really? You&#8217;re going to do it, Richard?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh yeah. When is this going to happen?&#8221; Petty replied.<\/p>\n<p>The King also said he believes that Patrick could win at this weekend&#8217;s Daytona 500,\u00a0&#8220;She could even win the race here \u2013 if somebody gets behind her and pushes her through the crowd.&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Richard Petty says Danica Patrick will never win\" href=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/02\/10\/richard-petty-says-danica-patrick-will-never-win\/\">Petty criticized Patrick\u00a0<\/a>during an appearance at the Canadian Motorsports Expo earlier this month, saying that the only way she would win a race was \u201cif everyone else stayed home.\u201d He also commented that if she was male, \u201cNobody would ever know if she\u2019d showed up at a racetrack, \u201d because \u201cit is a female deal that is driving her. \u201d<\/p>\n<p>Petty did see some good in that though, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with that, because that\u2019s good PR for me. More fans come out, people are more interested in it. She has helped to draw attention to the sport, which helps everybody in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Richard Petty stands by comments, says he is not sexist\" href=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/02\/16\/richard-petty-stands-by-comments-says-he-is-not-sexist\/\">When Petty was asked about his comments<\/a>, he said he stood by them, \u201cWhat I said is what I said and that\u2019s what I believe, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patrick\u00a0<a title=\"Danica Patrick on Richard Petty: Everyone is entitled to their opinion\" href=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/02\/13\/danica-patrick-on-richard-petty-everyone-is-entitled-to-their-opinion\/\">brushed off the 200-race winners comments<\/a>,\u00a0\u201dI still say the same thing: Everyone\u2019s entitled to their own opinion. People will judge what he said, whether they judge it well or not, and I\u2019m just not going to (judge).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Stewart spoke out earlier this week about comments Richard Petty made about his race car driver, Danica Patrick. Stewart threw out an offer to the King on Performance Racing Network that the two should race each other. &#8220;I told her she should challenge Richard to a heads-up race,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cI think that would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,786],"tags":[176,535],"coauthors":[674],"class_list":{"0":"post-11785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cup-series","8":"category-nascar-topstory","9":"tag-danica-patrick","10":"tag-richard-petty"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11785"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}