Petrie family takes love of cars beyond the fast lane

Advertisement

By FRED COUZENS

VIEW STAFF WRITER

Until about a year ago, Jim Petrie had spent six years pounding the pavement reading utility meters for Boulder City.

At the same time, and up through this year, the utility billing account clerk who's now found on the ground floor of City Hall also was pounding the pavement in a different way -- in a race car at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"I came in fourth, but I was second most of the race," said the 29-year-old racer in recapping how the 30-lap Charger Division feature race went under the lights Aug. 12 at the Speedway's Bullring. "I had the second fastest lap at 17.727 seconds. I moved up to third place in the standings. I was 29 points out of first and now I'm 37 points out of first with three races to go, so I've got an outside shot at the championship this year."

Petrie was the Limited Late Model Division -- the division that morphed into the current Charger Division -- Rookie of the Year in 1997, one year after NASCAR Nextel Cup champion Kurt Busch won the same award in the Dwarf Car Division at the Speedway.

"I raced against both Kurt and Kyle (Busch) and they both were fast," Petrie said. "It's kind of nice to say I've raced against two Nextel Cup racers."

While the Busch brothers pursued professional racing careers, Petrie and his older brother, Pat Jr., burned up the Bullring on weekends while they pursued their day jobs. Pat is a caseworker for Nevada's Welfare Division.

And it's not just Jim and Pat, the only brother duo currently at the Bullring, who are into racing, but their dad and three other brothers as well.

"My dad was a three-time racing champion in Colorado back in the '60s," said the 35-year-old Pat, who's now in his 15th season of racing. "He quit in the early '80s, but got back into it in 2000 when he decided he wanted to race again. At one of the first races, he had a heart attack and was dead for a few minutes before they defibrillated him and brought him back to life. The next year he and I won the track championship. That was pretty cool."

Jim and Pat Jr. have two other brothers that show up on weekends -- Sam, who helps to set up the cars and get them ready for the three-eighth-mile bank oval track, and Joe, who builds engines and chassis but has no interest in racing the cars he puts together.

A fifth brother, Donny, would be there on the weekends but he's an Army sergeant stationed in Kentucky.

The five Petrie brothers have a sister, Katie, but Jim said, "she doesn't have much interest in racing at all."

The siblings, all graduates of Basic High School, and their dad live within minutes of each other in South Henderson, which makes for close family ties.

"That's how we do things, together as a family," said Jim. "We've been doing it for so long with dad it's just the kind of thing we do. It's quality time with dad, my brothers, my wife and the kids."

Nevada State Bank is the primary race sponsor for both Jim and Pat, helping to bankroll the $20,000 annual budget for the race team and the nearly $1,500 needed weekly to buy the $100 Hoosier race tires and the $8-a-gallon, 105-octane fuel required for the pair's practice laps, heat races, Jim's 30-lap feature race and Pat's 40-lap IMCA Modifieds feature race.

"It gets pretty expensive when you get into it," Jim said. "But the bank's getting a lot of good visibility with their sponsorship."

The Petries impressed the bank's top executive, which is how the relationship came to be in April of this year.

"Jim met with Bill (Martin, chairman, president and chief executive officer of the bank) and Bill was impressed with the whole family," said Jeff Bargerhuff, marketing director for the state's fourth largest bank. "Jim and the family are well-known in Henderson and the bank was considering making inroads with the NASCAR circuit, so we decided to sponsor him. For us, it's been great with Jim in the Charger series and Pat in the Modified series."

Not only does the bank get promotional value with its name, initials and Kelly green colors splashed liberally on the two Number 1 cars seen most weeks during the racing season by as many as 5,000 spectators, but the cars and drivers attend school functions, private and community events and parades, such as when Jim's car rode on a float down Boulder City's streets during the Fourth of July Damboree.

"We do a pretty good job of leveraging our sponsorship," Bargerhuff said, "because in this area the Petrie name is just about as recognizable as the Busches and the Trickles."

The Petrie name gets seen around town in numerous other ways, too --T-shirts, hats, fliers and other imprinted materials -- because one of the family's main associate sponsors is Silver State Silk Screen.

All of that non-race stuff is well and good and necessary to put a racing team out on the track in search of the checkered flag and, hopefully, a season championship, but when Saturday afternoon rolls around, it gets down to some pretty serious business.

Within minutes of pulling through Gate 2 and into the pits, cars roll off the trailers and they're out doing practice laps. Then it's back into the pits for some fine-tuning orchestrated by a dedicated team before the heat races.

The dining canopy goes up to provide shade under the broiling sun, tool boxes are wheeled off the trailer and socket wrenches click away as exhaust fumes from a revving engine nearby waft over the pit area. Tires are measured and air is filled, or released, depending on the stagger -- the size difference in rear tires -- so the car bites into the track and doesn't slip out of control.

After everything's checked and rechecked you know it's time for qualifying when Jim, using a reference from the Will Ferrell movie "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" says, "All right boys, shake and bake."

With his racing out of the way on Sunday, one might assume Jim and his fireproof racing suit would cool it in front of the TV to watch the Nextel Cup series race and his oval pals, Kurt and Kyle, but that's normally not the case.

"I don't see it that often, but I'll try to watch it if I can," said Jim. "Usually, though, I'm outside working on the car."