CUP: Petty Hits Road For Annual Kyle Petty Charity Ride Without Trusty Sidekick

Sprint Cup

CUP: Petty Hits Road For Annual Kyle Petty Charity Ride Without Trusty Sidekick

SPEED™ co-host, unlikely best friend picks up the ride after wrapping up Richmond NASCAR duties

Megan Englehart | Posted April 26, 2012 Charlotte, NC

Rutledge Wood (left) and Kyle Petty have become unlikely best friends as well as regular trackside co-hosts on SPEED. (Photo: SPEED)

Petty: “The expression on Rutledge’s face was priceless. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh! Who is the psycho standing next to me?’ From then on, it was like we were the same in a lot of ways.”

As Kyle Petty straps on a helmet and hits the road Saturday in Napa, Calif., to open the 18th annual Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America, he’ll do so without his trusty sidekick and NASCAR on SPEED co-host, Rutledge Wood.

Wood, Petty’s unlikely best friend, will be at Richmond International Raceway for his regular duties co-hosting Trackside and reporting for NASCAR RaceDay on SPEED, both of which feature Petty as co-host. Wood, however, will grab his motorcycle and pick up the more than 175 Charity Ride riders about 36 hours late in Reno, Nev., and remain with the gang until just a few hours before they conclude their ride May 4 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Those early hours of the cross-country motorcycle trek, which raises funds for Victory Junction Gang Camp, are some of the very few that Petty and Wood spend apart each year. The duo is inseparable every weekend on the NASCAR circuit.

The old cliché “fate brought us together” doesn’t exactly apply to them. For these unlikeliest of best friends, it was a messy, rocket-propelled bratwurst that broke the ice during their introduction.

The two, co-hosts of SPEED’s Trackside every Friday from NASCAR Sprint Cup Series venues, shared a mutual friend in Petty’s former manager, who suggested they meet. Introductions were made on the Trackside stage at Watkins Glen International in 2006, when Petty, still driving at the time, was a guest. Wood, shooting a segment from a sponsored grilling area on the side stage, asked Petty to join him for a moment on-air.

“I told Kyle, ‘They’ll put the camera on us, and you just smile and put some mustard on this brat,’” Wood recalled. “I’m smiling and flipping brats and all of a sudden, Kyle loaded his brat up with a pound of mustard and chucked it into the crowd like a grenade. I thought, ‘Oh crap. I’m in big trouble. My career is over.’ But fans were going crazy and jumping for the brat, so I handed Kyle another one. He loaded it up with mustard and chucked it into the crowd again. I said to myself, ‘This guy and I are going to be friends,’ and we started hanging out after that.”

“I was laughing because Rutledge didn’t have a clue what I was about to do,” Petty recalled. “When I threw the brat, the expression on Rutledge’s face was priceless. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh! Who is the psycho standing next to me?’ From then on, it was like we were the same in a lot of ways.”

For many on the outside looking in, Petty and Wood make an extremely unlikely pair with absolutely nothing in common. Their 19-year age difference aside, one hails from stock-car racing royalty while the other grew up anywhere but in the NASCAR garage. But the two say they couldn’t be more compatible.

“The fact Kyle Petty is my best friend is pretty hilarious when you consider I’m just some kid who grew up in Birmingham who didn’t know much about racing,” said Wood, who also co-hosts the U.S. version of Top Gear on History Channel. “But we’re very similar. I’m sometimes a little more mature, although it may not appear that way, and somehow we meet in the middle.”

“I look at us as a likely pairing in so many ways -- from music to current events to being a smart-aleck who wants to have fun,” Petty said. “What is strange is Rutledge is Adam’s age. He’s 32. In essence, he could be my son. How crazy is that? That’s the funny part that no one ever thinks about. It’s like who’s the oldest and more mature in this group?”

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