Richard Petty recalls violent Darlington wreck, how his mother created NASCAR window net

Richard Petty tallied three victories at Darlington in his NASCAR Hall of Fame career. But it’s his violent crash in the 1970 race at “The Lady in Black” that served as a pivotal moment in the sport’s history.

Petty’s steering failed on Lap 176, and his No. 43 Plymouth slammed nose-first into the frontstretch wall. His car came to a stop upside down with Petty himself hanging out the left side of the car. That wreck spawned the creation of the window net. Petty’s mother Elizabeth made the first window net now mandatory in NASCAR. Petty told the story of how it came to be during an appearance on the FS1 broadcast for Sunday’s race at Darlington.

Richard Petty recounts the story of how his horrible wreck at Darlington in 1970 led to his mother creating the modern window net in NASCAR pic.twitter.com/5q7N2kbd2z

— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) April 6, 2025

“She made us a window net,” Petty said, via Steven Taranto of CBS Sports. “We only ran the window nets in California at Riverside, but it wasn’t mandatory anywhere else. Once we did that, my mother said, ‘This is going to work.’ NASCAR then [made the window net mandatory]. Now, every race and every organization in the world, there’s window nets. It took something like that — a spectacular idea — to really sink into the safety feature.”

Petty added, “We had some stuff that was fireproof. She cut the things and sewed them up herself.”

Richard Petty returned to racing shortly after big Darlington wreck

Petty miraculously came out of the accident with *only* a broken left shoulder. He missed five races before returning to action at Michigan International Speedway. As Petty recalls, the aftermath of the crash was pretty eventful as well.

”The cat driving didn’t know how to get out of the infield,’’ Petty said in 1992, via NBC Sports. ”He would have driven on the track if I hadn’t stopped him. He didn’t know about the tunnel under Turn 3 and didn’t know how to get to the hospital in Florence. Start to finish, it was quite a deal.’’

Today, the 87-year-old remains involved in the sport. The seven-time Cup Series champion is an ambassador for Legacy Motor Club, formerly known as Petty GMS Motorsports. Legacy fields two full-time cars — Petty’s iconic No. 43 piloted by Erik Jones and the No. 42 with John Hunter Nemechek behind the wheel.